Month: November 2008

Justice has prevailed! The greatest evil since Microsoft themselves has finally been laid to rest!

Final judgment: SCO owes Novell millions (plus interest)

“Federal district judge Dale A. Kimball has handed down the final judgment in the SCO case. The decision dismisses SCO’s latest claims, grants declaratory relief to Novell, and sustains the court’s previous judgment that SCO owes Novell over $2.54 million (plus interest) for unjust enrichment. SCO’s protracted legal shenanigan has been running for roughly five years now. The company originally claimed that it owned the UNIX SVRX copyrights and that incontrovertible evidence had been uncovered that the open source Linux kernel was written using a significant amount of code that was misappropriated from SVRX. In reality, SCO’s own internal audits of Linux source code turned up no evidence of copyright infringement; meanwhile, Novell has turned out to be the rightful owner of the SVRX copyrights. SCO managed to use its false claims to extract licensing revenue out of companies that were apparently uninterested in contesting its claims. Novell took SCO’s claims to court and eventually triumphed, which pushed SCO off of the precipice and into bankruptcy. Judge Kimball determined that SCO was subject to a contract with Novell, which it violated by lifting SVRX confidentiality provisions in a licensing agreement with Sun. This move exceeded the authority granted to SCO under the terms of a 1994 asset purchase agreement that enabled SCO to sell limited SVRX licenses to third parties on behalf of Novell. Judge Kimball also determined that SCO breached its fiduciary duty by neglecting to remit the requisite portion of the licensing revenue to Novell. In addition to the $2,547,817 that SCO was originally ordered to pay to Novell in a previous judgment, SCO will also have to pay $918,122 in prejudgment interest and $489 per day from August 29 until November 20. SCO is in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings and does not presently have the resources to pay the amount in full. A constructive trust has been established with $625,000 of SCO’s remaining resources.”

Wow! There are id-jits, and then there are id-jits! Sigh!

Oregon Woman Loses $400,000 to Nigerian E-Mail Scam

“Janella Spears of Sweet Home says she simply became curious when she received an e-mail promising her $20.5 million if she would only help out a long-lost relative identified as J.B. Spears with a little money up front. Spears told KATU-TV about the scammers’ ability to identify her relative by name was persuasive. Spears, who is a nursing administrator and CPR teacher, said she mortgaged the house and took a lien out on the family car, and ran through her husband’s retirement account. ‘The retirement he was dreaming of — cruising and going around and seeing America — is pretty much gone for him right now,’ she said. She estimates it will take two years to clear the debt that accumulated in the more than two years she spent sending money to con artists.'”