One of my distractions...

As some of you know, I read groklaw somewhat regularly. The other morning, I may have waken someone up with my belly-laugh when I read (after too many days hearing about Hewlett-Packard Inc.-- I understand why: PJ's stock in trade as a journalist are this kind of leak and there is some need for journalists to be able to do their thing without being spied on -- and the "d" link above is truly chilling but still. Did it need THAT many articles? I thought not.) that Novell had amended their counterclaims against SCO to require them to pass along their SCOSource license fee revenue back to Novell: if their heretofore collected license fees are ruled as belong to Novell, then this slander of title suit brought by SCO against Novell may serve to strangle their case against IBM to death. And that wouldn't be entirely a bad thing, I think.

(I remember thinking some time ago, that it was odd that given the tenuous hold SCO had on Unix IP, they should then be able to claim license fees on Unix IP from all Linux users without so much as a breath about paying any portion of them to Novell. And now Novell has said so plainly...)

Still, it might be better if SCO v. IBM could continue, at least to the point that it would be a matter of accepted case law in the US that Linux does not contain infringing material from Unix. There's already more than enough noise in the Linux market over the GPLv3 process (and I plan to post my opinion on that front some time...) to have lingering threats murmuring out from any other shadows. The extent to which Linux has been developed out in the public eye is probably a cautionary lesson towards anyone else who might try this on other fronts but even so, it'd be good to have a conclusion reached, appeal-proofed and in the books for all to refer to.

Back to SCO, though, and its claimed right to collect license fees (and then hang onto the loot), IANAL (but like other groklaw readers, I have been attracted to the idea of becoming one through the description of the SCO odyssey and some of the IP law issues that still remain to be settled) but it seemed to me pretty clear that all SCO ever had the right to do was collect monies on behalf of Novell. I wonder that anyone ever took them as having more value than that? If Martha deserved to do hard time for her small insider trading misdeeds, Darl and the top management of SCO deserve more for their pre-meditated pump and dump on a wing and a lie. Much more. I wonder if any indictments against them are in the works?