|
|
| Jay Petersen's New Declaration About Novell Copyright Notices |
 |
|
Saturday, May 26 2007 @ 01:22 AM EDT
|
SCO has filed as an exhibit a new declaration from Jay Petersen [PDF], along with some other filings I'll put up next. Peterson responds to the Declaration of James McKenna [PDF] regarding copyright notices found in UnixWare, offered by Novell in support of Novell's opposition to SCO's motion for partial summary judgment on SCO's 1st, 2nd and 5th causes of action and for summary judgment on 1st counterclaim. In his earlier declaration for the IBM case, which I gather is sealed, Peterson had testified that he had repeatedly found Santa Cruz copyright notices dated 1998 in UnixWare. McKenna countered with Novell 1995 copyright notices continuing to be found in UnixWare years after the APA deal, which Peterson tries to explain. His explanation is that Santa Cruz didn't remove other people's copyright notices. However he says that Santa Cruz never *added* any Novell copyright notices either. They just left whatever was already in there alone and added their own on top. I don't believe that is accurate, quite aside from it not being the customary way to handle copyright notices, and I point you to some research Groklaw did several years back that seems to directly contradict what Peterson states. If you reread this Groklaw article from 2004, Notice This Notice?, you'll find both some 1996 Novell copyright notices and one dated 1998 in UnixWare.
I note that Sandeep Gupta also stands up and says [PDF] something about copyrights, but its almost all redacted, so it's impossible to refute, except to note that the same Groklaw article mentions that Novell and Santa Cruz continued to work together for a time on UnixWare after the APA, and I believe that is the answer to Mr. Gupta, who in the IBM litigation gave testimony that did not bear close scrutiny by Brian W. Kernighan, IBM's expert, who scathingly wrote that Mr. Gupta's "methodology, and therefore his conclusions, are indefensible". Another IBM expert, Dr. Randall Davis, also found Gupta's testimony inaccurate.
|
|
|
|
| Authored by: grouch on Saturday, May 26 2007 @ 01:55 AM EDT |
| Please post corrections to the article here.
Thanks!
---
--
grouch
"People aren't as dumb as Microsoft needs them to be."
--PJ, May 2007
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: grouch on Saturday, May 26 2007 @ 01:57 AM EDT |
| Please post Off Topic comments here.
Thanks!
P.S. tux500 is ON. Deadline
approaching.
---
-- grouch
"People aren't as dumb as Microsoft needs them to be."
--PJ, May 2007
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: sef on Saturday, May 26 2007 @ 02:36 AM EDT |
However he says that Santa Cruz never *added* any Novell
copyright
notices either. They just left whatever was already in there alone and
added
their own on top.
That is the way I recall it being done, and is
also what I've done everywhere
I've worked since.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 26 2007 @ 10:27 AM EDT |
At work, I'm a programmer working with Infinium Software which was resently
purchased by SSA Global.
The old copyright statement read:
Copyright YEAR Infinium Software all rights reserved.
The new statement is:
Copyright YEAR Infinium Software all rights reserverd. Infinium Software is
a whole owned subdivision of SSA Global.
I take this to mean that the copyrights are still owned by Infinium and that
Infinium is owned by SSA Global; thus, SSA Global has the copyrights. The
software is closed source; however, they send the code along with application
to all their customers to allow customizations.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 26 2007 @ 11:27 AM EDT |
that I wonder if he's crossed a line into an alternate universe where history
was/is totally different.
In paragraph 6 he says "When SCO [defined earlier in the declaration as
"The SCO Group (SCO)" ] obtained the Unixware source code from Novell
as a result of the parties' 1995 transaction SCO did not remove any copyright
notices."
But there was never such a transaction in 1995 - there was a transaction between
Novell and The Santa Clara Organization, that involved an exchange of Santa
Clara Organization stock for the right to manage the Unix license management
business. The SCO Group didn't even exist in 1995!
[Here I remove a snarky remark about sworn misstatements in legal proceedings!]
Here is a legal question for those more familiar with court proceedings: When a
distortion of the record such as this is identified within minutes of becoming
available, what should "officers of the court" do to remedy the
situation?
JR
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: emacsuser on Saturday, May 26 2007 @ 12:27 PM EDT |
I've just noticed that because the IP protection only extends to end-users and
cannot be passed on it effectly acts so stifle growth in at the corporate level.
Very clever that.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 26 2007 @ 02:27 PM EDT |
As a programmer I'd say these lawyers are trying to interpret too much into
something that programmers usually type (or forgot to type) on the fly.
It's usually not the lawyers who work on some source code, but programmers.
Where I work we have some unwritten rule to not touch any copyright statement in
code, unless it is our own statement and we just extend the year range or year
list.
We have bought large amounts of source code, and that code sometimes had a
number of previous owners, so there are often multiple copyright statements in
some piece of code.
When it comes to updating copyright statements in the source, well, I don't know
any programmer who makes this the highest priority. So we do sometimes forget to
add our own statement, or to update it. There might also be cases where someone
just made a typo, e.g. 1998 instead of 1989. Or someone might have accidentally
deleted an older statement.
For me as a programmer that copyright statement stuff is decoration, and any
lawyer trying to interpret something into it should get his head examined.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
|
|
|
