03.08.10
SCO’s Latest Cash Infusion and Urgent Call for Volunteers to Attend Trial Today (Utah)
Summary: Groklaw needs volunteers urgently, Yarro deal is now approved
Groklaw needs volunteers later on today (US citizens near the trial). “We need a volunteer to cover the first day of trial,” writes Pamela Jones. “Our volunteer has the flu, so it’s a crisis. This will be the day they pick the jury and possibly also do the opening statements, about the most important day of the week.” It starts in about an hour.
For those who do not follow the SCO case using sites like Lamlaw and Groklaw, the gist of the latest Novell versus SCO motions is that Yarro, a former SCO executive, [1, 2, 3], is making a deal with SCO. This is terrible and Pogson is rightly outraged.
The loan agreement from Yarrow and a few others includes provisions that if the debtor, SCOG, defaults, the group of insiders gets all the assets and walk away, subverting justice entirely. Why would two judges agree to let insiders in a bankruptcy have preference over creditors? That might be reasonable if the litigation has any chance of success but it has not. The copyright legislation is very clear. There must be an explicit transfer of copyright. Even if SCOG owned the copyrights, IBM has proven that they did not violate them, being the original authours of the code they contributed to Linux. So the outcome of this if let stand is that the insiders get to terrorize businesses that use GNU/Linux for years more until the dust settles. Even the death of SCOG will not stop this. Only the US Supreme Court can, in a year or two. Novell has appealed the Tenth Circuit result. There is a 200 page copy of a document purporting to be their request for certiorari on the web. We should have confirmation soon. The deadline for application has passed. I am hopeful that the SCOTUS will see the undermining of copyright law as sufficiently urgent to put this matter to rest ASAP.
Also in Groklaw over the weekend:
• Novell Never Mentioned UnixWare in its press releases in 2003
• March 5 Bankruptcy Hearing Report – Updated
12:28 – Ms. Burton, attorney for Mr. Yarro, spoke up by phone and assured the court that that the LLC is in existence under Utah Law
SCO does not want to die and neither does Microsoft. The SCO case has probably helped Microsoft gain billions of dollars so far (at the expense of GNU/Linux), so let’s get it done and over it. SCO’s trial was partly funded by Microsoft and it’s rather slanderous. Go speak to Pamela if you can help by attending the trial (she has detailed instructions). █
