SCO has
responded [PDF] to Novell's
Notice just filed in Utah District Court. Novell is asking that court to assign both the
Novell case and the
IBM case to the same judge or to consolidate the two cases. SCO's Chapter 11 Trustee, Edward Cahn, also submits a statement in support of SCO's position, which is basically that it needs to hurry up and finish the
Novell trial. It's running out of money. It doesn't want to detour to decide the SUSE arbitration first, which Novell also is requesting, and it sees consolidation with
IBM to be not only not necessary but something that will drag things out.
Granting the Novell request for the same judge to be assigned to both cases surely wouldn't slow down the
Novell case at all, but it would help the new judge having to suddenly deal with these complicated and interwoven cases to at least comprehend how they interact, particularly with respect to the GPL.
Don't forget that Judge Dale Kimball was assigned to both
IBM and
Novell. So assigning the two cases to one new judge to replace him would simply be returning to a kind of status quo. And if Novell prevails in the arbitration, SCO's copyright claims pretty much go poof. Why wouldn't you want to do that first, particularly since now it's ripe on the vine, whereas when the Utah court decided to go forward on both tracks, the arbitration was just beginning. It would have been decided long ago, had it not been for SCO's bankruptcy filing.
Neither SCO nor Mr. Cahn show any comprehension, from what I could see, of the General Public License and how it will affect SCO.
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