Novell heads to the courts

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: DAVE KEARNS ON NOVELL NETWARE TIPS
06/09/05
Today's focus: Novell heads to the courts

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* Latest legal dealings down in Utah
* Links related to Novell NetWare Tips
* Featured reader resource
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Today's focus: Novell heads to the courts

By Dave Kearns

Today, we'll take a brief break from alerting you of new and old
utilities for the NetWare/Open Enterprise Server platform to
bring you up to date on Novell's legal maneuverings. Maybe we
could call it "Law and Order: Special Weirdos Unit."

Novell was recently in federal court in Utah asking U.S.
District Judge Dale Kimball to dismiss The SCO Group's "slander
of title" suit. In its suit, SCO is suing Novell because the
Waltham, Mass., company claimed that it - not SCO - owned the
copyright to Unix System V, Release 4 (SVR4) so therefore SCO
had no standing to sue IBM. According to SCO, this comment so
inflamed the potential clients for SCO's Unix offerings that the
clients stopped buying them.

While a quick glance at SCO's financials (
<http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=164950> )
confirms that business is way off, most attribute this to an
intense dislike of the company and its CEO, Darl (a.k.a.,
"Darth") McBride in the wake of its frontal assault on Linux and
the open source community. Still, SCO could hardly sue McBride
for causing its problems, could it? Well, maybe it could. That's
hardly as bizarre as its claim that the open source GPL license
violated the U.S. Constitution. (Don't believe me? See
<http://www.thescogroup.com/copyright/> )

Novell's other recent trip to federal district court also
involved folks who some think may have taken leave of their
senses.

The company settled with stockholders who had brought a
class-action over what the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals had
termed "various accounting shenanigans" that took place in the
same time frame as the ouster of Ray Noorda, the selling off of
WordPerfect and a generally disastrous time for the company.
Rather than face a trial on the charges that Bob Frankenburg,
the then Novell CEO and chairman of the Board and his CFO had
conspired to book as "revenue" sales that never actually
occurred, the company paid out almost $14 million to make the
suit go away. These are the same people, by the way, who
announced that they were going to sell off WordPerfect, come
hell or high water, and were surprised when they were only
offered about 10% of the price they had paid for the
applications. Paying the money to settle the suit was a very
wise move, in my opinion. It's nice to know that Novell's
current management isn't letting sentiment get in the way of
hard-headed legal moves.

We still don't have a ruling by Judge Kimball in the SCO slander
suit, but it's expected any day now. I'd bet on Novell
prevailing in this one, also.

Now if only it took the same hard-headed attitude towards
marketing.
_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Dave Kearns

Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's
written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print
"Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be
found at Virtual Quill <http://www.vquill.com/>.

Kearns is the author of three Network World Newsletters: Windows
Networking Tips, Novell NetWare Tips, and Identity Management.
Comments about these newsletters should be sent to him at these

respective addresses: <mailto:windows@vquill.com>,
<mailto:netware@vquill.com>, <mailto:identity@vquill.com>.

Kearns provides content services to network vendors: books,
manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing,
technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill
provides "words to sell by..." Find out more by e-mail at
<mailto:info@vquill.com>
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Novell
Discover the Power of Two with Novell Open Enterprise Server

Still Using NetWare? Upgrade today to the next generation.
Novell Open Enterprise Server combines the power of NetWare with
the flexibility and agility of Linux. Learn more at
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=105710
_______________________________________________________________
ARCHIVE LINKS

Archive of the Novell NetWare Tips newsletter:
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/netware/index.html

Novell news page:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/financial/novell.html
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FEATURED READER RESOURCE
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For the latest in VoIP security, check out NW's Research Center
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latest news, reviews, product testing results and more all
related to keeping VoIP networks secure. Click here for more:
<http://www.networkworld.com/topics/voip-security.html>
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