Comments about ‘Jury sides with Novell in Unix copyright ownership case against Lindon-based SCO Group’

Wonderful! Novell is the greatest!

Finally. SCO was never anything but a litigation company and they deserve what the jury gave them, NOTHING.

Seven years, three court decisions. What a waste of time and money. SCO would probably have done much better pursuing technology and sales rather than litigation. Thanks a lot, Darl.....

Very nice Novell. And the jury can pat itself on the back for reaching the correct decision. Boo to whoever framed a contract that took 7 years to interpret.

Boo indeed to whomever drafted the contract. Unfortunately, if you draft a bad one, more attorneys fees to figure it out.

SCO didn't win themselves a whole lot of friends with their strategy of reckless, careless litigation. Some lessons to be learned:

* do ALL your homework before you sue
* if your main business strategy is litigation, be prepared to deal with the ramifications of alienating a large number of potential and actual customers and turning industry opinion decidedly against you
* if you're thinking of hiring Darl McBride as your CEO, think twice...

If indeed SCO did intend to buy Unix lock stock and barrel, they should have drawn up a contract that said as much.

Instead the contract gave them Unix, but not the copyrights. ... what ever that means.

If SCO is to sue anybody they should sue the lawyers who didn't do their homework, they should sue their CEO at the time who didn't do his job.

Oh that's right, if we have learned anything with all the recent corporate scandals, it is, its not the job of CEO's to know anything, just to get paid as if they are responsible for knowing things and enduring the well being of their companies.

The contract was NEVER ambiguous. You can't get much clearer that "Excluded assets: ALL copyrights".

The amendment opened the door for possible exceptions to the all out exclusion, if SCO needed them. SCO decided that a possible exception equated to an all out Inclusion. The contract was actually always pretty clear, it was only SCO that was good at creating confusion.

Fortunately, it took seven years, but eventually the court system caught up to what we all knew about 3 days after SCO filed their first lawsuit... what a terrible waste...

If you can't innovate, litigate.

SCO's attitude is only a reflection of today's society. Instead of achieving their own greatness by invention, they steal and extort it from others.

Didn't congress just do this with the "health care" wealth redistribution program?

Except in this case they failed, score a point for the little folks...

Have not the principals made off like bandits? Look at their continuing salaries - follow the money. And as individuals, will not the bandits one day regroup and continue operations under other corporate guises, even if, after time, the Santa Cruz Operation ceases to exist? It's high time to hold the principals of SCO personally responsible for this charade.

This is truly an example of the abuse of the idea that corporations have and can exercise rights - as if they were humans - with a very limited liability for the directors.

How has this been bankrolled? And who of you are now using Redmond's software to read this? With a little courage, you could be using a far more reliable (free) OS: Linux.

Many thanks to Novell's leadership in staying the course, to Novell's legal team, to Pamela Jones of Groklaw for her ceaseless research and documentation, and to so many others.

It's true that the management and owners of corporations can't generally be held financially liable for the failings of their companies, but there are other ramifications. McBride lost his job back in October, and will have a very hard time finding another one thanks to this fiasco. SCO is a shell of its former self and only time will tell if it can even continue in its current diminished state; I'm guessing management's salaries have taken big hits and that some people are hanging on only because they know nobody else will want to hire them.

I don't know why everyone is sticking up for Novell...they're the worst run company in America.

Voted worst stock you could have ever purchased.

Come on...worst stock ever? Who voted on that - you? Sounds like you bet the farm on Novell stock, like many of us, and didn't win. The chip on your shoulder doesn't prove anything in particular about Novell. They are still very solvent, despite the lousy run of tech luck since early 2000. I've got many other stocks worth much less than NOVL (try 0.0001 for instance). The stock has had its good times and bad, like many others, but appears to be recovering nicely. Sure, it's no Microsoft or Google, but how many of those actually exist?

Ah, that was the Wall Street Journal...perhaps you've heard of it. They rated stocks over the last several decades and said if you purchased Novell that you bough the worst performing stock of all time.

Why don't you get back to your job brown nosing over at the big red machine.

Novell may be badly run, but Caldera -> SCO has been worse. Novell is still worth $2B, based on the recently rejected bid, while SCO is already bankrupt, and about out of cash and hope.

Rooting for Novell here is more an issue of thinking they've done the right thing in this particular matter. No one should be applauding its historic strategy, which has been in a downhill spiral since Windows 3.1 was released. There's the large influence of Microsoft, proven monopolist n involved there more than anything one can really pin on the Novell management.

-dB

"Worst stock over several decades"? Doesn't that REALLY say that Novell had its heyday several decades ago? (Which is true.) What it does NOT say is that you couldn't have made a profit with NOVL since then. Like buying in 1995 at 17.50 and selling in early 2000 at 43.00. Or buying in 2002 (or thereabouts) at 2.85 and selling now at 6.01. Of course, if you bought at 43.00 ...

Badly run? Novell has been in Bill Gates' sights ever since he and Ray Noorda fell out in about '92. How many companies whom Microsoft had declared it would destroy are still around 18 years later? Oracle and Novell, and that's about it.