Judge to SCO: shut up and pay up

Welcome to a special IT Blogwatch EXTRA: as Richi Jennings watches the "final" judgment in the SCO vs. Novell saga. Not to mention how Firefox reacts to pop-ups...

Nancy Gohring fries an egg on it:

Another chapter in the lengthy legal saga between SCO and Novell is closed, with the release of a final judgment by a Utah court on Thursday.

The judgment largely reiterates earlier orders dismissing copyright-infringement, slander and breach-of-contract claims brought by SCO, but it also prevents SCO from being able to dismiss certain claims and then revive those same claims in potential future appeals
...
SCO has lost a number of rulings in the ongoing battle with Novell, including a major loss last year when a judge decided that SCO owes Novell for licensing revenues SCO received from Sun Microsystems and Microsoft. Prior to that ruling, the long-running dispute served as a threat to Linux users who might have feared legal action from SCO. SCO had charged IBM with copyright infringement over the use of Unix, a charge the court essentially said wasn't valid.

Pamela Jones grins:

The final judgment ... resolves the recent dispute over SCO's desire to voluntarily waive some claims and then bring them back to the table after an appeal, should it prove successful ... dismissed "without the possibility of renewal following appeal."

SCO caved on its voluntarily dismissed claims, then, and Novell did not. So, another loss for SCO. No matter what happens on appeal, then, SCO can't resurrect those claims. It can appeal the rest of the matters it lost in August 2007 and July of 2008.

Novell, however, in an identical circumstance, can pull its voluntarily dismissed claims out of its back pocket and go after SCO ... Novell might want to appeal the judgment from July that SCO had the right to enter into the Microsoft and SCOsource end user licenses. I know I would like them to ... After the lull in SCO news, for sure it's going to get really interesting again pronto.

gus3 runs the numbers:

Dismissed, dismissed, dismissed. $2,547,817 in converted monies, over $918,122 in interest on it, and $625,486.90 for the constructive trust against The SCO Group. That's well over $4,000,000 that SCO will no longer have for bogus litigation.

If they are indeed ordered by the court to pay, it will reduce their equity by roughly half. My money is on Darl McBride never being allowed to try this stunt again.

schon thinks about SCO CEO, Darl McBride:

Darl may have been eloquent - right up until he had to answer questions. But once he did, it was quite obvious that it was a scam.

For example, when he said that every Linux user owed him $699, the immediate question was "why? Where is the code?" His response was always "I can't show it to you."

You don't have to be a genius to understand that was an outright lie. If he can't show it to you, then you don't have to pay him. The excuse that they had NDAs that prohibited it was laughable ... just absurd. Darl came across as a sleazy con-man.

Penguinisto has another thought:

Whoever is left holding the by-now worthless SCO stock would have little trouble in finding a contingency lawyer willing to sue McBride (and his buddies) personally for fiscal irresponsibility.

There is also the chance that the SEC may get in on the act as well.

And Amazing Quantum Man reminds us of the lack of singing fat ladies:

Still pending:

• Bankruptcy
• SuSE UnitedLinux arbitration (stayed pending resolution of BK)
• IBM's counterclaims (stayed pending resolution of BK)
• RedHat (stayed pending IBM)
• AutoZone (technically still alive, don't believe anyone's ever going to finish it. Stayed pending IBM, I believe).

yog wonders:

One might also ask, whither Microsoft, now that their $86 million investment in Baystar has turned out to be a complete waste. Shouldn't some executive's head roll for this?
...
If someone can waste that much money at Microsoft and get away with it, they must be either Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates.

DXLster waxes cynical:

Ummmm, that $86 million was the best money MSFT spent since the $50,000 for QDOS. The chilling effect that the SCO suit produced for the Linux community was huge, and bought MSFT a lot of extra time.

And you can't even begin to imagine the degree to which it has slowed innovation in IBM Software Group. IBM engineers can't post without 10 person-months of review from Legal.

And finally...

• How Firefox reacts to pop-ups
  

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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 23 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.

Previously in IT Blogwatch:

• BlackBerry Storm vs. iPhone: FIGHT!
• HP multitouch laptop: baiting Apple fanbois, for teh lulz!!1!
• McSpammers fixing broken McBotnet?