Perspective: What SCO Paid for UNIX

Message ID: 84761
Posted By: crunchie812
Posted On: 2004-01-23 00:59:00
Subject: Perspective: What SCO Paid for UNIX

1)Novell paid $750 million for USL
2)Old SCO paid $100 million for SysV and Unixware rights
3) Sun paid $81 million for _non-exclusive rights to SysVr4
4)Caldera pays $36 million for Od SCO

Posted on Groklaw by Harlan:
"Novell doesn't need to justify their use of UNIX, Even the SCO Group admits in their amended complaint - filed against IBM last summer - that Novell paid $750 million over the years to obtain the rights and title to UNIX.

The APA says that SCO agrees that the rights Novell exercises under the Technology License Agreement are a right retained and not sold to buyer.

What Caldera needs to explain is how they purchased the assets and rights to three businesses and product lines - SCO's Open UNIX, AT&T/USL's SVRX, and Univel's Unixware, plus all of the licensing and copyrights for a mere $36 million. Those figures can be verified by the SEC filings, Tarantella's investor relations press releases, and even Forbes magazine: What SCO Wants, SCO Gets

They also swindled investors who listened to Caldera's promises to open source the UNIX operating system.

Old SCO only paid 6.1 million shares and $19 million cash (around $100 million) according to Novell's SEC filings. SUN paid $81 million at almost the same time, and got no business assets, or product lines at all. They only received the non-exclusive rights to SVR4.0 - and they are still buying "clean-up" licenses and drivers from the SCO Group to this very day.

Message ID: 84767
Posted By: i_am_fava
Posted On: 2004-01-23 01:36:00
Subject: Re: Perspective: What SCO Paid for UNIX

A couple of comments:

The $81 million that sun paid was for rights "equivalent to ownership", thats why SCO says that sun is clear, they are actually incapable of infringing. If they wanted they could open source parts of SysV and nobody could stop them.

Of the $36 million that Caldera paid, about $28 was for the distrubution channel and about $8 million was for the distrubution rights themselves.

fava

Message ID: 84925
Posted By: rex007can
Posted On: 2004-01-23 11:47:00
Subject: Re: Perspective: What SCO Paid for UNIX

I would be inclined to agree with your evaluation if it was not for the line stating that all Copyrights and Patents were specifically excluded.

It's very confusing because different parts of the APA seems to support ,at least partially, both sides of the argument. It is very difficult to discern who is actually right.

We have to admit though that SCO's credibility is pretty much non existant at this point. So one naturally tends to believe the party that, so far, has seemed the most honest.

It's also interesting, as a lot of people have stated, that in the exchange of correspondance, SCO doesn't state any arguments other than "go back and read it again". While Novell keeps quoting specific lines from the APA and explaining what they believe it to mean. Doing that also gives Novell's arguments more weight.

Not very meny people are actually qualified to really interpret the true legal meaning of the APA completely. So most of us have to rely on each party's interpretation. And you have to admit, SCO hasn't come up with much ion terms of understandable, logic or undeniable explainations so far...

Message ID: 84985
Posted By: crunchie812
Posted On: 2004-01-23 13:51:00
Subject: Re: Perspective: What SCO Paid for UNIX

<< Before you prove yourself further a fool, reread the USL vs. The Regents of UC-Berkeley case concerning BSD. The value of the intellectual property rights in Sys V were adjudged worthless, as it was all public knowledge, and the judge was about to put it in the public domain before the Regents mercifully settled for a pittance to allow USL to save face. >>

Precisely. Santa Cruz clearly stated in their SEC filings that they bought the Unix source licensing business. They also added Unixware to their product line. This deal occurred not long after the Berkeley case. If the copyrights were discussed, Santa Cruz probably said "Not if we have to pay money." The original APA flat out excluded copyrights. After further negotiations Santa Cruz said, "But what if we need a copyright in the regular course of the business?" And Novell replied, "Well, in that case we can transfer that copyright to you." Hence Ammendment 2.

Novell paid $750 million, SCO paid $36 million, or 4.8% of that, and got 5% of the revenue for administering the business, plus the Unixware product line. Does that help put it into perspective?

Message ID: 84991
Posted By: crunchie812
Posted On: 2004-01-23 14:04:00
Subject: Re: Perspective: What SCO Paid for UNIX
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<< Novell paid $750 million, SCO paid $36 million, or 4.8% of that, and got 5% of the revenue for administering the business, plus the Unixware product line. Does that help put it into perspective?>>

Ooops. Caldera paid $36 million. SCO(Santa Cruz) paid $100 million, 13.3 %.

Note that Novell bought USL at the time of the BSDI/Berkeley case and knew what it was getting.

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