Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Novell Clarifies "Derivative" for SCO -- 11:06 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Groklaw got their (her?) hands on some new information from Novell indicating that SCO's definition of "derivative works" is not in keeping with the original AT&T agreement. Here's a snip of the creamy goodness:

In fact, SCO's interpretation of section 2.01 is plainly contrary to the position taken by AT&T, as author of and party to the SVRX licenses. AT&T clarified the meaning of section 2.01 in its $ echo publication, which AT&T described as its own newsletter "to reach all UNIX System V licensees through one defined medium" and "keeps them abreast of any product announcements, policy changes, company business and pricing structures."

Specifically, in an edition of $ echo dated April 1985 (the same month that the Sequent license agreement was signed), AT&T announced that changes would be made to the SVRX license agreement "to clarify ownership of modifications or derivative works prepared by a licensee." AT&T said this and other announced changes were "in response to direct feedback from AT&T licensees and [were] intended to make the contracts more responsive to the needs of the licensees." AT&T then followed up by adding to section 2.01 a sentence clarifying that AT&T "claims no ownership interest in any portion of such a modification or derivative work that is not part of a SOFTWARE PRODUCT." Even more clearly, the August 1985 edition of $ echo explained that this "sentence was added to assure licensees that AT&T will claim no ownership in the software that they developed -- only the portion of the software developed by AT&T." Copies of the April and August 1985 editions of $ echo are enclosed for your convenience.

Let the crushing of SCO begin! Thanks Linux Today.

The Master comments: This should be the beginning of the end. You'd think that all these monster banks with huge investments in SCO would have seen this stuff and be bailing out as fast as they could dump the stock, and yet SCOX is up 35¢ today. I'd love to know what the buyers of this stock are thinking. Maybe they actually BELIEVE SCO's B.S.

News for 02/11/2004

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