Authored by: Aladdin Sane on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 06:19 AM EDT

Place corrections here. ---

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. --Richard Feynman [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Aladdin Sane on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 06:21 AM EDT

Discuss Groklaw News Picks here. Please say which News Pick you are discussing. ---

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. --Richard Feynman [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Aladdin Sane on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 06:23 AM EDT

Discuss everything non-article-related else here. Use HTML mode when posting clicky links. ---

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. --Richard Feynman [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: complex_number on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 07:07 AM EDT

PJ saidWhat I see from these exhibits is that SCO's business slowed noticeably after 1994. At that time, I worked for Multi Billion Computer Manufacturer and we had a lot of SCO stuff in the pricebook. What stopped us from actually selling any was trying to understand the mess of bits(sorry vital parts) we had to put on the order only for SCO to throw it back at us saying it was incomplete AND not help us sort out the missing bits. It was a real sales nightmare and we soon gave up trying to sell this thing called Unix on X86 computers. We started giving customers this little upstart system called Linux which I personally been using since Slackware 1.1 was released on Floppy. Talk about shooting themselves in the foot... ---



Ubuntu & 'apt-get' are not the answer to Life, The Universe & Everything which is of course, "42"

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: complex_number on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 07:13 AM EDT

The list that is in the article mentions ONLY those who licensed SVR5.

There were other ways to get UNIX.

For example DEC sold a BSD based version of Unix called Ultrix.

Other Companies did the same. Did Darl get challenged about his factually

incorrect statement? I guess not. IMHO, the same applied to a lot of things that

SCO have siad over the years. Sigh, more examples of SCO FUD.





---



Ubuntu & 'apt-get' are not the answer to Life, The Universe & Everything which

is of course, "42"

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 07:35 AM EDT

(Just re-posting a previous note, as was very late in the thread and doesn't

seem to have been covered elsewhere)







ARTICLE IX





EMPLOYMENT MATTERS



9.1. Termination of Employment. Sellers shall terminate the employment of all

Employees identified on Exhibit G hereto effective immediately prior to the

Closing. Effective as of the Closing, Purchaser shall offer employment to each

of the Employees identified on Exhibit G. Employees who accept Purchasers

offer

of employment and become employees of Purchaser as of the Closing shall be

referred to as the Transferred Employees effective on their initial dates of

employment with Purchaser. All Transferred Employees shall be subject to all

applicable policies and practices of Purchaser. Sellers shall remain liable for

all employee wages, salaries and benefits respecting each Employee arising out

of periods prior to the closing date, including, without limitation, all

benefits accrued as of the Closing.

*******************************



So, does this mean large redundancy/termination payments to all staff,

effectively using up what little funds are still held?

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: ChrisP on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 07:37 AM EDT

If you look at these licenses they are all for reference source code, not

runnable binary code. If you look at the APA as amended you will see that SCO

was allowed to supply source code this way without reference or payment to

Novell. I don't see anything odd here.



---

SCO^WM$^WIBM^W, oh bother, no-one paid me to say this. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 07:40 AM EDT

Of course 1995 was the year that Windows took off. I would have reserved most of

my budget for Win95 too. And it worked pretty well with Novell networks. The

computing landscape was changing then, and once you had lots of graphical

desktop applications, there wasn't so much need to write software for Unix. And

in any case the Unix companies couldn't decide on a single consistent platform

either in terms of an API or a user interface. It's no wonder that SCO's

business nosedived too. [ Reply to This | # ]



1995 - Authored by: PolR on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 10:26 AM EDT

- Authored by: PolR on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 10:26 AM EDT 1995 - Authored by: grouch on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 01:29 PM EDT 1995 - Authored by: PolR on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 03:28 PM EDT

- Authored by: grouch on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 01:29 PM EDT 1995 - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 02:20 PM EDT

- Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 02:20 PM EDT 1995 - Authored by: mnhou on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 08:08 PM EDT 1995 - Authored by: PolR on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 09:28 PM EDT 1995 - Authored by: Lazarus on Friday, July 10 2009 @ 12:53 PM EDT

- Authored by: mnhou on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 08:08 PM EDT

Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 07:40 AM EDT

What I see from these exhibits is that SCO's business slowed noticeably after 1994. Trying to remember what was happening back then, I think there were several trends, not just one, that were impacting SCO's business. Windows NT had been launched: the first version of Windows that could plausibly compete with Unix. People who wanted to migrate from Windows 3.11 to a full 32-bit OS could stay with Microsoft.

Sun Microsystems was doing very well, and people who wanted Unix were buying Suns. They were still a lot more expensive than PC boxes, but the price differential was dropping.

Competitors in the Unix-on-a-PC market had appeared, for example Microport, that licensed AT&T System V, built it for Intel 80286 and 80386, and resold it. What they were selling was unquestionably System V Unix, and it was cheaper than SCO Unix.

SCO was losing momentum - SCO Unix was seen as innovative in the 1980s when it was launched, and it had a clear marketing message, but it didn't come up with anything really new in the early 1990s and no longer had an "innovative" image. So I don't think it was any one factor - and it certainly had nothing to do with IBM. Doing business in a competitive free market is tough for a small/medium company: if you don't keep innovating technically and marketing aggressively, somebody will eat your lunch. I think that's what happened to SCO. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: JamesK on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 07:56 AM EDT

"There are some new customers after that, but it's nothing like the 80s and

90s up until 1995."



That would be around the time that OS/2 and NT were available and Netware was

going strong. I suspect this simply reflects that there were alternatives to

Unix for many applications.



---

Self Assembling Möbius Strip - See other side for details.

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 07:57 AM EDT

PJ wrote: Novell, Inc. UNIX SVRX Royalty collections due July 15, 2009 -- $13,129.51 -- Asset Purchase Agreement -- 1995 Why would that go to unXis? Three reasons: Unixware is a derivative work of UNIX SysV under copyright law. UniXis needs the implied copyright license from the APA in order to sell Unixware. The intent is that in 10 years time, if this saga is still going, all SCO's rights get given to UniXis. I.e. UniXis are buying the right to the continuing tax on Linux users that SCO is trying to impose. See the proposed Unixis APA. It's an asset and SCO are trying to give all their assets away so IBM/Novell/Red Hat can't get them. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 07:59 AM EDT

Santa Cruz sold UW-2.1 (1997) under AT&T SOFT-01341 (1988)

Who were they trying to duck? [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: tiger99 on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 08:17 AM EDT

I am amazed that Novell did not bring that up in Judge Kimball's court. It would

have nicely destroyed Darl's credibility as a witness to just about anything. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: JamesK on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 08:31 AM EDT

"free and clear of all liens"



I read this as "free and clear of aliens" :-)



---

Self Assembling Möbius Strip - See other side for details.

[ Reply to This | # ]



At first glance - Authored by: kjs on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 01:48 PM EDT

Authored by: sk43 on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 08:33 AM EDT

Back in 2003 there was a story titled "Agreement No. SOFT-2538 --SCO

Exhibit D -- 'A License for Nothing'"



http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20031108124035847&query=license+for

+nothing



"Santa Cruz Operation Inc. Reference Source Code Agreement No.

SOFT-2538"



That sounds like a lot like what these other licenses are. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: greybeard on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 09:18 AM EDT

FWIW, that Tandem Computers license was a follow-on to several prior source

licenses, rather than something new. It was acquired for the purpose of

providing an MP (multi-processor)version of the OS for Tandem's Integrity

hardware fault tolerant systems that ran System V with Tandem's proprietary

extensions to take advantage of the FT architecture. Tandem originally licensed

UNIX source in 1987-88.



---

-greybeard- [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: hAckz0r on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 10:27 AM EDT

If any technology related to UNIX is transferred doesn't Novell have to approve

of it? The way I see it, the APA only gave SCOg the right to collect licensing

fees for Novell, and even selling their own technology that contains the UNIX

source code would be illegal if not for Novell permitting it under the

pre-conditions spelled out in the APA. How can SCOg even think to transfer any

technology/source code for which they do not even hold the copyrights for?

Having the right to modify and sell their own version of UNIX does not give them

the right to sell it lock stock and barrel to a third party. By the APA, SCOg is

not even allowed to enter into new licensing agreements much less sell

everything.



---

DRM - As a "solution", it solves the wrong problem; As a "technology" its only

'logically' infeasible. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 11:26 AM EDT

Cisco on October 2, 2002 licensed UNIX System V Release 3.X Reference Source.

The license is CISC2002RS. You'll find it on page 50 of Part 3. That's on Darl's

watch. He started at SCO in the summer of 2002. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 11:29 AM EDT

SCO's business slowed noticeably after 1994



I joined a company in 1994 that sold a product that ran on various versions of

Unix, HP, General Dynamics, IBM, Data General, Dec and SCO Unix.



The general opinion at the time was that the SCO Unix was a problem to work

with.



A few years later when NT became a viable alternative, a number of customers

switched from SCO Unix to Windows NT. (Please don't ask me to justify, I am

just relating the experience.)



In this case, it wasn't Linux that was stealing SCO's customers, but Microsoft

Windows. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 01:00 PM EDT

From a certain science-fiction writer who was working there at the time: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/06/how_i_got_h ere_in_the_end_part_3.html Some key bits there are the fact that in 1995 the CEO retired and was replaced by the CFO -- and, as Charlie says, "Do I need to explain why putting an accountant in charge of a technology-driven company is not necessarily a wise, visionary, and forward-looking move?" And then there's the punchline -- the book that he found on his line-manager's desk, that convinced him to immediately leave for a new job. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 01:52 PM EDT

I was working in the system sales industry at that time. It was hard to get

updated software for SCO unix at that time. Even if you could get a vendor

commitment, it was impossible to get a timeframe for it.



System support was eclectic, it was hard to find admins for SCO boxes. Other

unix variants paid better to support staff.



It was difficult to sell SCO unix. There were odd approval mechanics within

SCO, that were, at best, inconsistent.



Windows NT was finally stable about that time. Micro$oft was commanding all the

ISV attention, and dollars, for development.



Adding it all up, there were too many minuses, and no real pluses, to buying

SCO. The only compelling factor would be if you already had an existing

application running on SCO. There were some sweet languages on the SCO boxes,

that had proprietary extensions or implementations. Transferring an application

OFF of a SCO box to another platform was a painful experience. (We did it. We

had little choice, there were no forthcoming updates, and we needed some

updates.)



-- Alma [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: vruz on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 02:47 PM EDT

That makes sense. It was around the time Microsoft started pushing Windows NT

strongly on workstations as an alternative to Unix-based ones.

So much that the product name was "Windows NT Workstation".

Windows NT would run on 32-bits Intel (IA-32), MIPS R3000/R4000 and Alpha, with

PowerPC, Itanium and AMD64 supported in later releases.

Silicon Graphics was forced to start selling Windows too.

The file sharing capabilities that came built-in in Windows NT were

revolutionary in that you could only get similar ease of use, power and

flexibility from competing products that charged a premium for it, like Novell.

With Windows NT, it came right out of the box.



IBM was perceived as the big blue evil at the time, and Microsoft was the lean,

mean and younger contender.

Microsoft closed the deal when they added the innovative and slicker Windows 95

user interface, in the resulting product that became known as Windows NT 4.0

(immediate predecessor of Windows 2000 (5.0) and Windows XP (5.1).

X-Window workstations from Sun and others costed dearly, Windows NT worked okay

on cheap PCs.

Windows NT originally bundled a POSIX compatibility layer, mandated by US

Government to be considered for any software contracts, and there used to be

products from Microsoft and third parties to build bridges between the Unix and

Windows world. (most notably X-window, Httpd, NFS server software).



At that point it's interesting to note that Novell would charge as much as $1000

for an FTP client.

It's almost a greek tragedy tale that the mature Microsoft have aged to become

the monster they defied to death.





---

--- the vruz [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: PolR on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 04:12 PM EDT

May be I have my tin foil too tight. But I have a question to ask.



We know that according to the sales agreement SCOG keeps the litigations and the

assets go to unXis. But how about future litigation?



If all the contracts go to unXis, they can be used to sue. The litigation may

still be used for FUD and harassment. What stops unXis from interpreting any

ruling and settlement imposed on SCOG narrowly so new litigation on

"different" issues is still allowed? It is not like they are building

a viable business with a sound product line. If no sanctions fall on SCOG and

their executives, a path to riches for more shady characters is open. What if

someone decides it does not matter if unXis goes bankrupt if its CEO keeps his

bonuses? As long as the PIPE (as in fairy) doesn't dry out litigation may

continue.



Remember when Goldfarb wanted SCOG to sell its UNIX business and focus all the

cash on the litigation? Had this advice been heeded none of the bankruptcy dance

we have seen would have been possible. But Darl decided to keep the Unix

business and here we are. Is this coincidence? Or is it foresight? Considering

how baseless this whole litigation has been, one may think that an exit strategy

may have been planned as soon as it was clear that IBM wouldn't buy SCOG to make

them go away.



I think these possibilities may explain why IBM decided to issue a subpoena.

They want to know what kind of hydra they are dealing with. The problem with

hydras is there is no use to chop only one head off. You need to cut all of

them.

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: tanner andrews on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 06:29 PM EDT

SCO's business slowed noticeably after 1994. I don't know why, but for sure it wasn't Linux So you say. I was in that business back then. We were one of the important SCO resellers, and I had the (oldSCO) ``ACE'' certification. I did a fair amount of software development at the time. Linux was admittedly not so far along as it is now; the SMP support was speculative, and device support was limited. On the other hand, software development worked better under Linux even then. Linux was faster for the same hardware, and it provided a more standards-compliant API for network stuff. I had a lot of #ifdefs for SCO to work around various bugs and infelicities. Through the later 1990s, I displaced SCO with Linux systems. Yes, you would find those systems primitive today, but keep in mind that I could, even then, do things like run legacy MS-DOS apps under Linux (displaced a bunch of dual-boot SCO boxes), run name servers, mail servers, DHCP servers, and pretty much any other network server you liked. During that time, SCO worked to make life difficult. The license/activation dance was a nuisance when it worked, and it always took way too long. That made new systems more challenging. Linux worked to make life easier. No activation hassles. License? GPL. Compiler? GCC, not SCO's crufty old MS compiler. Debugger? GDB, not the old unix debugger. That's not to say that SCO did not have its good points. Like Linux, it was reliable. Neither system was prone to crash. There were some apps that ran on SCO and were not offered directly for Linux. Still, my experience was that I could often install Linux instead of SCO, giving the customer a better system for a lower price. The sales critters hated that because their commission for a Linux license was a percentage of $0. They should have been grateful, because they were (a) selling commissionable hardware (b) taking care of the customer so that he would be there next time (c) selling labor, which was really the value-add in the company. Sales types do not think long term, however, so there was no gratitude. I cannot have been the only one during the 1990s who was replacing SCO sales with Linux sales. I was one computer guy in a country full of them. By the end of the 1990s, Linux was ubiquitous in server farms. It was not rare in other production environments, either. A computer guy who needed a server could get a Linux system in under the radar: grab an old box from spares, load up Slackware, and did not have to ask the bean counters for a budget. It follows that at least part of the decline in SCO sales was directly attributable to Linux. Better product, better price. ---

I am not your lawyer; please ignore above message.

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: sk43 on Thursday, July 09 2009 @ 09:50 PM EDT

1. Aside from the business contracts in the first half of Part 1, all of these

are source code contracts. Even though the vast majority are

"dormant" (such as the DaimlerChryler one), they have probably never

been formally terminated, which is why they are all listed. Actually, t is

quite remarkable how many organizations obtain licenses of one sort or another.

Tiny colleges obtained source code licenses.



2. In Part 7, there actually is a contract with Microsoft that is listed as

"terminated". Curiously, the contract with Silicon Graphics (Part 3)

is not listed as terminated. Didn't SCO send them a 60-day notice? Perhaps SCO

never followed through.



3. Part 3, p. 41 - Was Tandem's license to Unix System V 4.2 MP (Dec. 9, 1998) a

new SVRX license? Or was it an upgrade under an existing license? This

transaction is listed in Column 5, "Product Supplement". Let us

suppose that Darl is correct. In this case the SVRX license, as defined in the

APA, is Tandem's original Agreement SOFT-00712, dated April 17, 1986. However,

elsewhere SCO has argued that it is the Product Supplement (or later the Product

Schedule) that is the actual license, in which case Darl is wrong (and SCO is in

violation of the APA by issuing new SVRX licenses without Novell's approval).



4. The 2003 Sun licensing agreement (of which part is on appeal in Denver) is an

amendment to the original SOFT-000296, Part 3.



5. Educational licenses to Universities basically ended in 1991-1992. This was

when AT&T spun off USL.



6. Part 2, page 11, it appears that HP, like IBM, never obtained a license for

System V R4. Instead, it stopped at R3.2. (Or am I missing something?)



7. It would seem that the UNIX landscape really changed starting in 1993 when

Novell acquired USL. Before that, AT&T and USL were in the source code

licensing business, with companies such as IBM, HP, Sequent, Santa Cruz, etc,

making money selling binary licenses. Novell, however, was in the binary

licensing business itself and thus a direct competitor to any company who would

purchase a source code license. This factor, perhaps among others, would

explain the decline in source code licenses around 1995. It is not a direct

reflection of the state of SCO's business itself (which had one of its best

years ever in FY99) but is a strong reflection of the state of the "UNIX

ecosystem" in which SCO operated. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: sk43 on Friday, July 10 2009 @ 07:52 AM EDT

This is the original license agreement between Santa Cruz and AT&T. You

might think that it is no longer relevant, but in fact it is referenced in the

Novell/Santa Cruz APA Amendment 1, which is still operative:



---------

1.2(e) Revenues to be Retained by Buyer.

...

4. royalties attributable to the distribution by Buyer and its distributors of

binary copes of SVRX products, to the extent such copies are made by or for

Buyer pursuant to Buyer's own licenses from Seller acquired before the Closing

Date through Software Agreement No. SOFT-000302 and Sublicensing Agreement No.

SUB-000302A.

---------



Surely the new buyer would surely want to have a copy of SOFT-000302, at least

to document which binary royalties it is not obligated to pay to Novell. For

old time's sake. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: RPN on Friday, July 10 2009 @ 09:46 AM EDT

My, admittedly limited, direct experience and observation is that ISO 9000 is

badly applied 95%+ of the time and the consultants and auditors are if anything

worse than the implementer. If you get it right and apply it right a fair amount

is commonsense any good company is applying anyway but ISO 9000 gives you a

framework and excuse to document it properly then manage the procedures etc

soundly.



On the other hand if you get it wrong every criticism voiced in the posts above

is absolutely true and more. It is critical you get leadership from the top and

that leadership cuts through the BS that all to readily creeps into any set of

rules, regulations etc. If you don't get that as I've seen myself it doesn't

matter how well the people down the chain try to make it work.



In one company the person who wrote the standards originally did a decent job

and he trained the internal auditors, including me, pretty well but the two

managers above treated it as just another bit of paperwork they had to deal with

so audit issues were never dealt with, the documents were never updated fully,

when the writer retired no one took over managing it and the auditing died. I

pointed out time and again we had no email policy or IT security policy in place

which was crazy, ISO 9000 or not, but nothing happened. The company got taken

over by an even worse ISO9000 follower and died when the parent went bankrupt.

To no ones surprise.



I used to deliver, assess and audit vocational training and that suffers exactly

the same problems. You end up down at the lowest common denominator the awarding

body will tolerate which completely negates the value of the qualifications

because they end up a tick box exercise with a load of paperwork and not a

genuine training. When I first went in years ago it was worthwhile. I've no

interest in going back because of the way it works now and I gather from

business contacts they are increasingly disinterested in the qualifications

involved because they know they have little value. That's a very sad outcome for

everyone.



Richard. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 10 2009 @ 12:05 PM EDT

I don't think that it is that strange that there were few licensees for this,

which is the Multi Processor version.

At that time there were limited venues to run such software.

Tandem would have been one of the few hardware manufacturers that needed this.



It was not like today where most machines have multiple cores. [ Reply to This | # ]

