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The decision is in, and SCO has gone down in defeat. The U.S. District Court in Utah has ruled in favor of Novell in SCO vs. Novell, the keystone case in SCO’s long, and ultimately unsuccessful war against Linux. The foundation of Judge Dale Kimball’s decision, that Novell, and not SCO owns the IP (intellectual property) rights to Unix, remains as solid as ever. Instead of showing that Linux violated SCO IP rights to Unix, SCO’s actions has lead to the revelation that it never owned the IP rights to Unix in the first place.This, within the narrow confines of...

Reality, as good writers know, is sometimes stranger than fiction. SCO's recent performance in the U.S. District Court in Utah is a perfect example. With years to prepare, SCO executives made some remarkable statements in their attempt to show that SCO, not Novell, owns Unix's copyright. While this case is not about SCO's claims that IBM and other companies placed Unix IP (intellectual property) into Linux, Novell's attorneys decided that they would address this issue as well. One presumes that, since this may be their one and only chance to attack SCO's Linux claims in a courtroom -- what with...

A reinvigorated SCO Group Inc. goes to trial Tuesday to once again defend its claims to a widely used computer software code against Novell Inc. Although what's at stake in the scheduled four-day trial pales in comparison to the unresolved major claims in the case that have rattled parts of the software community for the past five years, millions of dollars are on the table in a legal battle that has been widely watched. In play in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball is as much as $37 million that Novell claims it is owed in the dispute...

Novell Inc. and Microsoft Corp., trying to expand the reach of their unusual alliance, say they plan to put a bigger emphasis on the Chinese market. The companies say they will make an extra investment to sell more support subscriptions for Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating system in China. The idea is to court companies currently using Linux without any software support, often for free. China is "quite a large and growing market in terms of Linux," said Susan Heystee, Novell's vice president and general manager of global strategic alliances. There is "a very large nonpaid Linux market" in...

The extent of Microsoft's generosity to its open-source patent partners has been revealed in Novell's latest financial statement. Novell's SEC filing reveals the company received $355.6m from Microsoft during 2007, although some of that payment is "being recognised over future periods". The payment forms a significant chunk of Novell's revenue, with the company turning over $932m in 2007. Novell was heavily criticised within the open-source community for signing the deal with Microsoft. The agreement saw the two ADVERTISEMENT companies agree to work on a series of interoperability initiatives, and not sue one another's customers for patent infringement. However, Novell came...

Ding. Ding. Ding. We have a winner in the contest for the all-time best title for any document ever filed in the SCO v. the World litigations. I know that some of you have gotten attached to the Sur-Sur-Sur Replies of yore. But this tops everything. SCO has filed the following:Senior Secured Super-Priority Debtor-in-Possession Credit Agreement Teasing. It's what they call these things. It's about the "Litigation Credit Facility" mentioned in the APA, the $10 million York is willing to loan SCO to fund the "Specified Litigation". And guess which that is: "the IBM litigation and the Novell Litigation and...

The SCO Group, working to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, hopes to sell its Unix assets to York Capital Management for up to $36 million, the company said this week in regulatory and bankruptcy court filings. Through the deal, York would provide SCO with $10 million in cash; up to $10 million in credit to fund its Linux-related legal fight and to get 20 percent of revenue from that action; $10 million for a 20 percent stake in the company; and $6 million to license the Hipcheck products from SCO's Me mobile device software effort and to share revenue...

Patent Infringement Lawsuit Filed Against Red Hat & Novell - Just Like Ballmer Predicted Thursday, October 11 2007 @ 09:41 PM EDT IP Innovation LLC has just filed a patent infringement claim against Red Hat and Novell. It was filed October 9, case no. 2:2007cv00447, IP Innovation, LLC et al v. Red Hat Inc. et al, in Texas. Where else? The patent troll magnet state. The first ever patent infringement litigation involving Linux. Here's the patent, for those who can look at it without risk. If in doubt, don't. Here's the complaint [PDF]. And now let's play, where's Microsoft? You...

Novell's long journey from NetWare to Linux is finally complete. On Oct. 8, Novell released Open Enterprise Server 2 to its customers worldwide. Shortly after acquiring SUSE and its enterprise-focused Linux distribution, Novell announced that its follow-on to NetWare 6.5 would ship as a set of network services that could run atop the NetWare and the Linux kernel, OES (Open Enterprise Server) 1.0. OES, which began shipping in April 2005, was the first major step in Novell moving NetWare's services from its native operating system to Linux. Now, with OES 2.0, the NetWare operating system kernel, NetWare 6.5 SP7, is...

If the corporate Grim Reaper is truly knocking on the door of The SCO Group Inc., no one apparently told the company's CEO and president, Darl C. McBride. Despite SCO's a major court loss last month in its legal case against Novell Inc., its bankruptcy reorganization filing and an ominous-sounding quarterly U.S Securities and Exchange Commission filing last week in which SCO said there is "substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern," McBride insists that no one should be lining up yet for his company's funeral parade. On the heels of all of that news,...

Way back in January, I announced a program to write Linux drivers for companies for free. When I did that, I never expected the response to be as large as it was. It turns out that there were two large groups of people who responded to the announcement, companies wanting drivers, and developers wanting to help out. I never imagined that so many different people would offer to help out. There is a real need for a place where developers can find a "real" project to work on in the Linux kernel. The Kernel Janitors project is a great place...

Novell's Linux business has soared 243 percent since last November when the company signed its controversial deal with Microsoft. "The affect on sales year over year, for Novell's first three quarters of our fiscal year, which ends Oct. 31 -- our Linux business was up 243 percent year over year," said Justin Steinman, director of marketing at Novell, who, along with executives from both companies, spoke at a program hosted by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. And, that growth doesn't seem to be short-lived. "We're continuing to see above market growth year [over] year and that clearly has resulted in...

Boston - In the print edition of Forbes there's a great (albeit sometimes painful) tradition of doing "follow-through" articles where a reporter either takes a victory lap for making a good call or falls on his sword for making a bad one. Online publications don't typically ask for follow-throughs. But I need to write one. For four years, I've been covering a lawsuit for Forbes.com, and my early predictions on this case have turned out to be so profoundly wrong that I am writing this mea culpa. What can I say? I grew up Roman Catholic. The habit stays with...

Three and a half years after launching a high-profile legal attack on Linux, The SCO Group has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The Lindon, Utah-based company long has maintained that it had enough money to fight its costly lawsuits against IBM, Novell, Red Hat (which sued SCO proactively), AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler. But on Friday, a month after losing on a crucial legal ruling, the company admitted a grimmer picture. "The Board of Directors of The SCO Group have unanimously determined that Chapter 11 reorganization is in the best long-term interest of SCO and its subsidiaries, as well as its...

The Honorable Dale Kimball has now ruled: there will be no jury at the trial of SCO v. Novell. He granted Novell's motion on that. He will hear it himself. Here's the ruling [PDF], which comes in response to 8 motions, and here's how the judge ruled on them: * The SCO Group, Inc.'s ("SCO") Motion for Entry of Final Judgment Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b) -- No, so there will be no immediate partial appeal. * Novell's Motion to Strike Jury Demand -- Yes. No jury trial. Novell is seeking only equitable relief.

In lawsuits, as in baseball, there is no mercy rule. One side can be down by a dozen runs, but the game continues until the bitter end. So it is that SCO filed on Aug. 29 an appeal to the U.S. District Court decision that declared that Novell had never sold Unix's intellectual property to SCO. Spread the word:digg this story On Aug. 12, U.S. District Court Judge Dale Kimball ruled that Novell, not SCO, owns Unix's IP rights. Without Unix's IP, SCO's other cases against IBM, Red Hat and other Linux-using companies cannot be sustained. In Novell's financial earnings...

The company has no interest in becoming the next SCO Group, according to a spokesman. "We're not interested in suing people over Unix," Novell spokesman Bruce Lowry said. "We're not even in the Unix business any more." A US judge on Friday upheld Novell's claims to Unix copyrights that SCO has claimed to own. Those copyrights were the basis for SCO's highly controversial and ongoing Linux lawsuit against IBM. Lowry said the ruling means "the cloud has lifted over Linux." Users and distributors of the open-source OS finally can breathe a sigh of relief that they are not in violation...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- A federal judge's ruling Friday may help proponents of Linux open-source software sidestep a significant legal threat. SCO Group Inc. does not own the copyright to Unix operating-system software, as it had claimed, and Novell Inc. is the proper owner, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball said in a filing in federal court in Utah. SCO Group had sued Novell in 2004 for falsely claiming ownership of Unix. In 2003, SCO Group filed a high-profile lawsuit against International Business Machines Corp. for contributing code to Linux open-source software that it said included some of SCO's Unix-related intellectual...

A US federal court judge has ruled that Novell, and not the SCO Group, is the rightful owner of copyrights covering the Unix operating system (OS), a ruling that should have a major effect on a number of lawsuits, including SCO's actions again Novell, IBM and Red Hat. The 102-page ruling by Judge Dale Kimball refuted many of SCO's claims against Novell, and seemed to remove the basis for its lawsuit against IBM. SCO had previously charged that the Linux operating system was an unauthorised derivative of Unix, which it claimed to have purchased from Novell in 1995. "The court's...

Court Rules: Novell owns the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights! Novell has right to waive! Friday, August 10 2007 @ 04:52 PM EDT Hot off the presses: Judge Dale Kimball has issued a 102-page ruling [PDF] on the numerous summary judgment motions in SCO v. Novell. Here is what matters most: [T]he court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights. That's Aaaaall, Folks! The court also ruled that "SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver of SCO's claims against IBM and Sequent". That's the ball game. There are a couple of loose ends, but the big...

This is news indeed. Todd Bishop has the story. Eben Moglen is saying that the SUSE vouchers Microsoft is distributing have no expiration date! I didn't know this. It's huge. This is, according to Moglen's remarks, another defense to any patent infringement claim by Microsoft, and it may well bring that campaign to a screeching halt. Here's why. Someone, Moglen says, is bound to turn a voucher it got from Microsoft in after GPLv3 goes into effect and GPLv3 code is being distributed, and at that moment Microsoft comes under its terms. And that should mean the end of Microsoft's...

The controversial patent agreement between Microsoft and Novell included an intellectual property agreement that gave Novell's engineers access to Microsoft code, as well as a covenant not to sue each other's customers, Novell has confirmed. The two companies announced their patent deal in November 2006 as part of a wider interoperability effort but described it as a covenant not to sue each other's customers in order to avoid falling foul of the GNU General Public License used for Linux. The deal also included an agreement that gave Novell engineers access to Microsoft code, however, according to the company's director of...

THE FREE SOFTWARE Foundation has declared a jihad on Microsoft and Novell's licensing deal and has declared that it will wreck it using the latest draft of the GPv3. Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Association told Reuters that Open Saucers need to make sure that such deals "don't make a mockery of the goals of free software".

Youtube links below. Novell's website is very slow

The fate of the SCO Group's Linux-related lawsuits, as well as the Lindon software company's very future, could ride on how a federal judge interprets the word "all."    The way U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball rules on that question involving ultimate ownership of the Unix operating system could not only torpedo SCO's slander of title suit against Novell Inc., but fatally undermine its bigger, $5 billion claim against IBM. After hearing competing motions Tuesday, Kimball must decide whether SCO bought all rights to Unix in 1995 - or whether the seller, Novell, retained ownership while granting only limited licensing and...

Some activity in SCO v. Novell, and our first strong hints about what the Microsoft and Sun licenses were about, as Novell tells the court why SCO owes 95% of that money to Novell.But the big news is that in Novell's Redacted Reply to SCO's Opposition to Novell's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment or Preliminary Injunction, Novell informs the court, on page 15, that for SCO bankruptcy is inevitable and imminent:For SCO, bankruptcy is inevitable; it characterizes its assets as merely those “remaining” and does not rebut Novell’s arguments that its bankruptcy is imminent. Imminent. Inevitable. Bankruptcy. Here's the Pacer...

I barely know how to tell you this, but SCO has filed a motion for reconsideration of Judge Dale Kimball's November 29th Order in SCO v. IBM, the one affirming Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells' June 28th Order. I guess they figure things are so bad now, they have nothing to lose by trying. Here's the Notice of Conventional Filing [PDF]. Yes. Of course. It's under seal. So is the memorandum in support. Perhaps SCO will grace us with a redacted version in a bit. But in the meanwhile, we are left with our mouths open. Whatever are they thinking? Delay?...

Red Hat dismisses threat posed by Oracle and Microsoft 11th December 2006 By Matthew Aslett Red Hat Inc's executive vice president of worldwide sales, Alex Pinchev, has dismissed the impact that Oracle Corp's entry into the Linux support business could have on Red Hat, insisting Oracle does not really know what it is doing. Pinchev also described Microsoft Corp's recent interoperability and patent peace deal with Novell Inc as a "non-event" and dismissed the suggestion that Linux users are at risk of a patent infringement lawsuit from Redmond. Advertisement "They rolled out something that they don't understand," Pinchev told ComputerWire...

BOSTON (Reuters) - Business software maker Novell Inc. (Nasdaq:NOVL - news) posted disappointing quarterly results on Tuesday due to weak sales of older products, and said it expected to take restructuring charges in 2007, driving its shares down 10 percent. While Novell reported a preliminary fiscal fourth-quarter profit, bouncing from a year-ago loss, revenue fell 15 percent to $244.9 million, short of the average Wall Street forecast of $251.5 million, according to Reuters Estimates. "Overall these are disappointing results," said Jefferies & Co. analyst Katherine Egbert, citing the lower-than-expected quarterly sales figure and Novell's 2007 sales outlook. [Snip] A longtime...

Investors fled SCO Group’s stock on Friday, voting with their feet after a federal judge gutted its lawsuit against IBM. In mid-morning trading, SCO Group (nasdaq: SCOX - news - people ) traded at $1.36, down 64 cents, or 32%. [snip] On Thursday, the judge said SCO Group had provided no evidence to support its claim that IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) took code from Unix, which SCO claims to have some copyrights, and added it to Linux. Read the rest here.

Feast your eyes on this: Judge Dale Kimball has affirmed [PDF] Judge Brooke Wells' June 28, 2006 Order. Here's the heart of it: Having thoroughly reviewed and considered the briefing related to IBM’s Motion to Limit SCO’s Claims, the briefing related to SCO’s objections, the underlying previous discovery orders, and the arguments made at the October 24 hearing, the court finds that, even under a de novo standard of review, the Magistrate Judge’s June 28, 2006 Order is correct. The court finds that SCO failed to comply with the court’s previous discovery-related Orders and Rule 26(e), that SCO acted willfully,...

RUSSELS (Reuters) - Supporters of PC operating system Linux are preparing to counter a recent deal penned by Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) which establishes for the first time the principle of paying the software giant for the operating system, whose license requires it to be free. Microsoft signed a deal with Novell, one of the providers of Linux, in which Novell paid it a lump sum in return for a guarantee that Microsoft would not sue Novell's clients for what it calls a violation of its own patents in the Linux program. The prospect of a drawn-out legal...

Microsoft has announced a partnership with Novell and will help promote Linux. This is stunning. This is like Red Sox fans announcing they're going to root for the Yankees. Microsoft has spent ten years bashing the free-of-charge open-source Linux operating system and trying to kill it. Now Microsoft is making nice.

Now, let's look at Novell's history for a minute, shall we? Didn't Novell smack SCO up side the head with its claim that SCO owes it the money the Unix company has been using for its never-ending lawsuits? Didn't Novell hit SCO where it lived with its claim that SCO never actually bought Unix's IP(intellectual property)? Wasn't Novell one of the companies that founded the OIN (Open Invention Network) with the goal of sharing Linux patents without charging for royalties? The answers are yes, yes, and yes.

Novell Inc. on Nov. 7 published additional details about its agreements with Microsoft Corp. concerning Windows and Linux interoperability and patents. It seems the company is receiving an up-front payment of $348 million from Microsoft, for SLES subscription "certificates" and for patent cross-licensing. In Novell's Form 8-K submission to the SEC (Security and Exchanges Commission), Entry into a Material Definitive Agreement, the company states that "Under the Business Collaboration Agreement, which expires January 1, 2012, Novell and Microsoft will market a combined offering. The combined offering will consist of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and a subscription for SLES support...

Microsoft and Novell signed a historical partnership, that could not have been possible a year ago. Is that the beginning of the end for Novell? It seems the negotiations have begun more than six months ago, but have been kept secret until now due to the importance of this matter for both parties: the open source community on one hand and the proprietary software companies on the other. First of all, the folklore mentions that “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions”. Don’t be naïve to think that the Novell-Microsoft alliance will produce something good. At least not...

Microsoft and Novell signed a historical partnership, that could not have been possible a year ago. Is that the beginning of the end for Novell? It seems the negotiations have begun more than six months ago, but have been kept secret until now due to the importance of this matter for both parties: the open source community on one hand and the proprietary software companies on the other. First of all, the folklore mentions that “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions”. Don’t be naïve to think that the Novell-Microsoft alliance will produce something good. At least not...

Microsoft Is Set to Give Linux a Boost Through Partnership With NovellBy ROBERT A. GUTH November 2, 2006 2:59 p.m. Microsoft Corp. is entering into an unusual partnership with Novell Inc. that gives a boost to the Linux operating system, a rival to the software giant's Windows software, according to people familiar with the companies. Under the pact, which isn't final, Microsoft will offer sales support of Suse Linux, a version of the operating system sold by Novell. The two companies have also agreed to develop technologies to make it easier for users to run both Suse Linux and Microsoft's...

Excerpt - Microsoft Corp. is entering into an unusual partnership with Novell Inc. that gives a boost to the Linux operating system, a rival to the software giant's Windows software, according to people familiar with the companies. ~ snip ~

Novell is changing the file system software used by default in its Suse Linux operating system, aligning with rival Red Hat and moving away from a project whose future has become entangled with the fate of a murder suspect. Novell said Thursday that new versions of Suse Linux Enterprise will use ext3 as the default file system, important foundational software that manages how data is stored on hard drives. The change demotes the current default, ReiserFS, to a secondary, though still supported, option. ReiserFS has been under the control of Hans Reiser, a programmer who this week was arrested on...

Excerpt - SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Ray Noorda, the former Novell Inc. chief executive hailed as "The Father of Network Computing" and one of the early leaders of the software industry, died on Monday of an Alzheimer's-related illness at his Utah home, his venture capital firm said. Noorda, 82, is also credited as one of first high-tech executives to take on Microsoft Corp. over its dominance on the desktop and with helping to create the reseller approach to boost sales by allowing partners to offer its software. Noorda served as president and chief executive of Utah-based Novell from 1983 to...

Novell Inc. received a delisting notice from Nasdaq and a default notice from Wells Fargo, both related to the company's delay in filing third-quarter results. The Waltham, Mass. open source software maker said in a release Thursday that it plans to appeal and request a Nasdaq panel hearing on the matter. The company's stock will remain listed on Nasdaq until the panel makes a decision. ADVERTISEMENT In August, Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL - News) launched a voluntary probe of past stock option grants. The company is one of 46 investigating past stock option grant practices. While the review is underway, Novell...

Novell chief technology officer (CTO) Markus Rex has hit back at criticism the company included an "unstable" Xen virtualisation environment in its new Linux server, pointing to support from hardware partners. At Novell's Sydney office on Thursday, Rex responded to claims by Linux competitor Red Hat that Xen was not stable enough to be deployed in enterprise environments. Novell has claimed to be the first vendor to include Xen in its Linux distribution, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Xen, primarily developed by US-based start-up XenSource, allows users to run multiple operating systems as guest virtual machines on the same hardware. "If...

SUSE Enterprise Linux Server 10 finally cuts Windows Server's ease-of-installation advantage out of the picture. ******************************************* You no longer have to be an uber-geek to run a Linux server. With the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, Novell has at last put out a product that's as easy to install, administer and use as a Windows server--in some cases, even easier. And if you're looking for more reasons to make the move, consider the OS' wide range of free development tools, applications for everything from mail to office software, a wide choice of distributions and source code that's...

Hewlett-Packard has no plans to preload versions of the upcoming Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10 on PCs but will certify the operating system. Plans call for HP to certify SLED 10 for select notebooks--including the nx6310, nx6320, nc6320, nc2400, nx6315 and nx6325 models--before the year's end, a spokeswoman for HP said in response to questions from CRN.

Oracle is studying whether to launch its own version of the Linux operating system and has looked at buying one of the two companies currently dominating the Linux world, according to Larry Ellison, the software company’s chief executive officer. Such a move would redraw the software landscape and open a new front in Oracle’s long rivalry with US rival Microsoft. In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Ellison said that Oracle wanted to sell a full “stack” of software that, like Microsoft, included both operating system and applications. “I’d like to have a complete stack,” he said. “We’re missing...

The SCO v. Novell litigation just got a lot more interesting. Here are some more documents filed yesterday and now available on Pacer, and they provide some more explosive news, namely that SuSE on April 10th filed a Request for Arbitration with The Secretariat of the ICC International Court of Arbitration in Paris. Here are the ICC Rules, which you can download in several languages. We learn about this development in a Declaration by Michael Jacobs, one of Novell's attorneys, and you can see the request for arbitration on page 53 of his Declaration. Here it is along with the...

< Years into case, SCO asserts copyright infringement By Stephen Shankland http://news.com.com/Years+into+case%2C+SCO+asserts+copyright+infringement/2100-1016_3-6022453.html Story last modified Fri Jan 06 15:49:00 PST 2006 < After three years of accusations, SCO Group has finally begun aiming a legal charge of copyright infringement toward a Linux supplier. The claim is in an amendment SCO proposes to make to its lawsuit against Novell, whose sales of Linux, SCO argues, violate SCO's purported Unix copyrights. SCO filed its request to add the claim on Dec. 30, nearly two years after it first filed its suit against Novell. In the proposed claim, the Lindon, Utah-based SCO...

For big companies that want to use the Linux operating system and get business-level support, there are only two main options: Red Hat Inc. and Novell. And one of those looked shaky last week. After two years of refocusing, reinvention, and restructuring, Novell is reducing its staff by 10% to save money and suggesting that a change in CEO may be on the horizon. It's all part of trying to deliver on the growth promised when the company staked its future on open-source software in 2003. Novell's profits were up substantially between fiscal 2003 and 2004. But profits have slipped...

Welcome! Better Desktop is a project dedicated to sharing usability data with Linux developers. Over the past year, we have conducted many usability tests on different parts of the KDE and GNOME desktops. We created this site to serve as a place where developers can watch videos of these tests. Here you will find over 200 videos of people using Mozilla Firefox, Evolution, Open Office, Banshee, F-Spot and other applications. All of these can be found in the data section of this site. The video repository on this site is growing. We will continue to add video as we produce...