Re: SCO moronic loss in Novell suit

[RJack]

Alexander Terekhov wrote:
> RJack, I must disagree with you that SCO's suit against Novell was 
> moronic.

The thrust of my comment wasn't about SCO v. Novell being individual
winners or losers. The copyrights are are old and irrelevant. A clean
implementation would be child's play for a commercial firm in 2010.

Most of the functions described by those old unix copyrights may only be
implemented in very narrow, hardware dictated ways and merge directly
into non-protectable code. Run most of that code through the AFC test
and there's nothing left to protect through copyright. How many really
novel, creative ways can you manipulate at the hardware level for SMP,
RCU or NUMA stuff? How do you copyright a spin-lock? I believe you have
done extensive work at that hardware level. Moving bits to and from
registers and memory at operating system hardware level is dictated by
hardware specifications -- not creative expression.

My comment was aimed at the utter futility of maintaining a "services"
business model around a GPL style "copyleft" license . It doesn't matter
whether Novell or SCO wins -- they lose. What good is a Pyrrhic victory
for shareholders?

I noticed today that Versa Technology had two pro hac vice attorneys
approved and entered. This indicates they are not talking settlement
with the SFLC. I also haven't seen an extension order for inititial
document exchange for Versa. Versa was the only defendant to raise this
affirmative defense:

               FIFTEENTH AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE
    (ILLEGAL, UNCONSCIONABLE AND CONTRARY TO PUBLIC POLICY)
On information and belief, Defendant alleges that Plaintiffs’ claims are
barred, limited and/or excluded on the grounds that the alleged license
at issue in this case and/or certain provisions contained therein are
illegal, unconscionable and barred by public policy as well as by
statutory and case law.

I expect a motion to dismiss based on this defense from Versa in the
near future. When the GPL falls what is Red Hat's and Novell's next
business model? Without the GPL's benefit in suppression of new entry
level competitors, IBM and Microsoft will discard Red Hat and Novell on
the same trash heap where SCO resides.

Sincerely,
RJack :)