So, what do you think? Can Novell get its money from a Hong Kong foreign subsidiary? I'm sure we all agree that SCO would never try to stiff anyone, so the fact that they are setting this up just before the bankruptcy court is about to decide on the question of how Novell will get the money the Utah court decided SCO owes them must be entirely coincidental. I feel a song coming on:

Ah, sweet mystery of life
At last I've found you...
T'is love and love alone that can repay

I hope Novell likes music, because methinks it will never see that $3 million. The other creditors? Do they still hope? Like a raisin in the sun. Hark! There is one, buried in the bills, asking about the status of the case. Dream on, my friend! Lie back, try to relax, while I tell you about Hong Kong.

SCO Group Germany must check software updates of the nut/mother company message to read out

Sounds like a job for ELIZA. I'll try to explain what I understand the article to be saying, but if you have a better translation, please provide it.

SCO was enjoined from making certain claims in Germany, and it signed an agreement in 2003 not to say them there, because its alternate choice was to have to prove them immediately, so it chose silence. As a result, SCO can't say in Germany that Linux violates SCO's IP or that end users could be liable for violations of SCO's intellectual property or that Linux is an unauthorized derivative of UNIX. Unless it can prove it. Good luck with that. SCO hasn't been successful proving that anywhere, so it can't say that in Germany. But the US website makes such claims, which were apparently shown in Germany too. Naughty, naughty.

It seems that SCO pled the "we didn't see what the US was doing when it updated the page" defense, but it was told that it used that excuse once before, so now it must pay a fine to the complaining company. Here's an incident that happened in 2007, to refresh your memory. And here's a 2003 offense, for which SCO was ordered to pay a 10,000 EU fine. Are they incorrigible? Well. Let's leave that to God. However, the Heise report indicates that they are at least repeat offenders.

It sounds quite alarming, the way it's worded, but trust me, they don't drag them out at dawn and shoot them for this or disbar anyone. It's just the wording of the notice, which is standard. You can find Special Order 109 [PDF], In re: AUTHORIZATION FOR CONVERSION TO CASE MANAGEMENT/ELECTRONIC CASE FILING, here. It's local to Nevada, but it's part of the federal court system switch to digitalization. The Clerk of the Court is responsible to keep the official record, and so there has to be a way to identify when an attorney is who he says, when a document is filed. So this is what it refers to, that they need passwords and such. It also represents their consent to being served electronically.

Today, Judge George O'Toole lifted the gag order on three MIT students who were sued by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority for discovering a security vulnerability in the MBTA's fare payment system. The Court found that the MBTA was not likely to prevail on the merits of its claim under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. MBTA had argued that the CFAA, which prohibits the transmission of a program that causes damage to a computer, also covers "verbal transmission," such as talking to people at conferences. Judge O'Toole, however, looked closely at the statute, and held that the CFAA does not apply to security researchers like the students talking to people. More details to follow.

[Update: The MBTA had sought to convert the temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction to last for five months, to give them time to fix the vulnerabilities -- here's the motion [PDF] -- and that was denied. It's worth reading, this motion, if only to see why this thing swirled out of logical bounds. One issue is that when the MBTA hears the word hacker, they seem to think it means cracker, and they viewed the DefCon conference as a meeting where people go to learn how to break in to other people's stuff, which naturally panicked them. And they seem to imagine that using Wireshark, which used to be called Ethereal, is "illegal activity", as you can read on page 25. Nor did they understand geek humor. Just a real culture clash, with misunderstandings that led to litigation that now seems to be resolvable, now that the MBTA's attorney says he wants to meet with the students, to learn more about their research findings.]

So the attempt to stretch the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act has failed. Please read the statute for yourself, and ask yourself: do you want talking about computers and security to become a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment and subject to FBI and Secret Service oversight? That's what almost just happened. You can find the documents in MBTA v. Anderson here. If you read the MBTA's complaint, you'll find the allegations of violations of the CFAA on page 12. I think you'll find the MBTA interpretation of the statute shocking ("... the damage constitutes a threat to public health and safety... affects a computer system used by a government entity for national security purposes..."). The research was about getting a ride on a subway for free. In any case, the judge didn't buy it, with respect to the restraining order.

According to the ISO/IEC rules, DIS 29500 can now proceed to publication as an ISO/IEC International Standard. This is expected to take place within the next few weeks on completion of final processing of the document, and subject to no further appeals against the decision.

Wait a second. What's that "subject to no further appeals against the decision" part? What rules would those be? When I read the JTC1 Directives, Edition 5, Version 3.0 [PDF], I see in the section on appeals another step you can take if the TMB/SMB decide not to proceed with your appeal, which is what just happened:

11.4 Appeal Against a Decision of the TMB/SMBs

An appeal against a decision of the TMB/SMB shall be submitted to the Secretaries-General with full documentation on all stages of the case.

The Secretaries-General shall refer the appeal together with their comments to the members of the Councils within one month after receipt of the appeal.

The Councils shall make their decision within three months.

So, ask your lawyer, but I read that as saying a denial by the TMB/SMB is *not* necessarily the last word, no matter what the press release said, if an NB wishes to bring the appeal to the next level, which would be to the "Secretaries-General" and "the Council".

Who's that? How does that work? I've done some digging, and here's the joke. Three of the appealing NBs are listed as members of the Council. Again, ask your lawyer, but here's what I've found.

It might be a tad early for that title, methinks. IBM still looms on SCO's horizon, after all. Novell was a sideline. The main event has yet to occur.

SCO doesn't need as much money as they thought they would to give to Novell, so maybe Darl McBride can stay on as CEO after all, we learn. There's a new business plan that sounds like it has to do with calendars online and messaging, and ... well, read about FC Mobile Life, its project with FranklinCovey, for yourselves:

That type of transaction is essentially what happens with the FranklinCovey product FC Mobile Life, which provides near-instant communication for scheduling, delegating tasks and sending text, photos and audio, said Jeff Hunsaker, SCO president and COO.

"Our focus here is on collaboration, and it's real time. It's real-time collaboration with people you trust, with a group. We've kind of brought it all together. That's the value we bring here."

FC Mobile Life can work on BlackBerries and phones running Windows Mobile, with iPhone compatibility under development. The system interacts and updates information on a Web browser and smart phone. SCO also is working to integrate Microsoft's Outlook e-mail and calendar into the system.

So that's the plan. The new one. Real time collaboration with people you trust. Hmm. Trust ... People you trust. Hmm. Remember when they used to call Darl McBride "the Linux Killer"? Methinks that's still the real business plan. In his dreams.

I also discovered a wonderful site, Sourcewire that still has tons of Caldera press releases from 2001. Here's one I found there, the announcement about OpenUnix 8. That's the one with LKP, the Linux Kernel Personality. Guess what LKP included?

The LKP technology in Open UNIX 8 will include the same GNU tools and libraries built into Caldera OpenLinux(tm), which were developed with close adherence to the specifications of the proposed Linux Standards Base (LSB). Open UNIX 8 will track this developing standard, assuring the highest degree of application compatibility.

Libraries, eh? How fascinating. Isn't this fun? And what a dovetail, in that we just showed you what was included in OpenLinux. I have some more to show you on that in a later article. But do you see how valuable all scraps of information are? You just never know when it will matter in litigation, somewhere, some time.

Our first headline, from 1998, is "SCO Sponsors Linux." Yes, Santa Cruz represented itself at the time as hopping on board the Linux train, which even back then was being used in the corporate environment. At the time, SCO wanted to encourage Linux as an alternative to Microsoft, which at the time was considered its "enemy". In a press release, it talked about its "ongoing strategy to support the Linux and Open Source movements". Let me show you, please, what I found.

Under the ISO rules of process, this now paves the way for the as-adopted version of OOXML, now called IS0/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology - Office Open XML, to proceed to publication. That version is substantially different than the current implementation of OOXML in Office 2007, and its text has still not been publicly released by ISO/IEC. According to a joint press release, "this is expected to take place within the next few weeks on completion of final processing of the document." Intriguingly, the press release goes on to say, "and subject to no further appeals against the decision.

That should be hilarious, when they publish it and anyone tries to actually use it. Anyone? Bueller?

Keep in mind that Microsoft's Office 2007 does not implement OOXML. Infoworld May 21, 2008:

On Wednesday, Microsoft said it will not have support for the current ISO specific for OOXML until it releases the next version of Office, code-named Office 14. The company has not said when that software will be available.

What really happens next: the complaints lodged with the EU Commission. ISO/IEC decided to go down with the ship.

71 - Filed & Entered: 08/14/2008
Minute Order Setting Hearing
Docket Text: MINUTE ORDER IN CHAMBERS of the Honorable Judge Robert C. Jones, on 8/14/2008. By Deputy Clerk: K. Goetsch. IT IS HEREBY ORDERED the parties shall appear before the Court for a Status Conference on Monday, 9/22/2008, at 09:00 AM in LV Courtroom 7D before Judge Robert C. Jones.(no image attached) (Copies have been distributed pursuant to the NEF - KXG)

I don't know if one of the parties is initiating this stirring of the dust in Nevada, or if the judge wants to find out if this moribund case is ever going anywhere, but he may have some questions after reading the parties' status report SCO filed recently. Perhaps he is of the opinion that litigation should have an end, not just a beginning.

Of course, SCO being SCO, they'll do the "but we were only found liable for $3 million" dance, I suppose, and the "we own OpenServer" do-se-do, and OpenServer is part of what AutoZone was allegedly about. So, if you want to review all that, here's SCO's Complaint and Groklaw's AutoZone Timeline, where you can find all the filings, and the article on SCO's Free-OpenServer we recently published.