Please...
...let it die with dignity? Eh? Oh, yes, maybe it's a bit late for that.
Linux wins the SCO vs Novell case
The six-year-long Novell-SCO case is over - the judge ruled that Novell did indeed own Unix patents copyrights which SCO failed to license properly and therefore the case is closed. Of course this case has closed before, but this really does seem like the end of the line. Judge Ted Stewart said: "The jury could have rejected …
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Friday 11th June 2010 08:41 GMT Paolo Marini
and who has (not) benefited from this?
let's not forget who or what was behind the whole allegation of Unix copyrights and the real motives for the long and prolonged pyrrhic battle... just a hint of what a dying monopoly is trying to "invent" to put-up with its last gasps...
[read Groklaw if you need more information]
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Friday 11th June 2010 09:45 GMT John Angelico
Excuse me...
"Obsessive compulsive" ??
Sorry Vultures, but on this issue you can't even give credit graciously.
It seems someone still recalls the rankles when El Reg was sniping at PJ and Groklaw, and in particular the subsequent back-down when Groklaw pushed back - and was vindicated.
Bridge --> Construct -->> Traverse, please!
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Friday 11th June 2010 09:45 GMT I ain't Spartacus
It's over at last
One dark night, in an IT graveyard, somewhere not too far from here... An innocent IT worker is picking his way amongst the boxes, rolls of Cat 5 cable, dead servers kept for possible spare parts, old 486 boxes that really were going to be turned into fishtanks, honest, like that website said... Our IT worker is down here amongst the dust, the debris and the corpses of computers past, looking for a spare laptop hard drive.
The air-conditioning fans hum low in the background. An owl screeches. Our hapless geek turns, startled by the unexpected noise. Bathed in the moonlight through the window is a large packing crate. Unopened. Ooooh! Shinies! Toys to play with, and he's safely on his own to play with them.
Quickly he whips out his trusty belt-mounted Leatherman and levers up the lid. Tough this one. Good grief, it's nailed down, not stapled. With a lurch and a creak, the lid gives. His hand catches on a nail. A drop of blood falls into the case. At the bottom of which is... A pile of soil? What? Who mailed dirt to us? It's addressed from Lindon, in Utah, wherever that is.
Smoke rises, it fizzes.
Hang on! This isn't a packing crate. It's a... A... Coffin!
From the grave it rises. Rises again. The McBride of Dracula!
It grabs our poor friend, drains every last drop of the nutritious caffeiney blood from his body, and stalks off into the world in search of some lawyers...
[Hmmmm - I wonder if I've had too much coffee this morning...]
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Friday 11th June 2010 09:47 GMT Nick Kew
Now Novell is the threat
Novell under current management is a decent corporate citizen.
But it's value to IP pirates who think SCO had a good idea but just messed up execution may now be a lot higher than its value as an honest business. Indeed, there's evidence of that already: see for example http://bahumbug.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/fear-novell-or-buy-novell/
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Friday 11th June 2010 11:04 GMT gerryg
Please, crawl back under your bridge
Novell did not transfer copyrights to SCO, this is good and clean. This is a fantastic result by Novell for all of us, clearing the FUD around Linux.
The problem, if Novell had transferred the copyrights to SCO would then have been that no-one really knew what UNIX copyrights Novell actually owned, and then there's the tricky problem that there was no UNIX code in Linux.
So far, so what? The GPL. That's what the SUSE arbitration on United Linux was all about, the "even if" defence
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Friday 11th June 2010 09:47 GMT Golodh
Well ... there's one or two things wrong with this verdict ...
and that's that it doesn't
- (a) favour SCO,
- (b) doesn't present SCO with a way forward to press its suit against IBM, and
- (c) doesn't set out a clear way for SCO to sue the world over illegal use of Unix copyrights.
Other than that, it's fine.
Surely there will be an appeal? This state of affairs cannot last.
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Friday 11th June 2010 12:34 GMT Bob Foster
Time for SCO to sleep with the fishes
I seem to remember early on someone, It may have been Bruce Perens being quoted as saying that IBM's legal team in the SCO trial were like Keyser Soze from Usual Suspects, (First he kills you then he kills your family, then he kills your friends then he kills your parents, then he kills your parents friends.....well you get the idea ).
.....Time for IBM to live up to that reputation
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Friday 11th June 2010 12:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Err...
Why when we have articles about legal matters do we end up with sentences like "the judge ruled that Novell did indeed own Unix copyrights which SCO failed to license properly and therefore the case is closed" without any explanation of the the reason for the failure to properly licence or the Judge's reasoning?
I'm sure that we can all understand this sort of thing, can't it go into the article rather than forcing us to other web sites to find out?
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Friday 11th June 2010 13:59 GMT ChrisInBelgium
Not really
Better goto Groklaw, way too long to explain in one article. You'll realise once you start reading up on the case...
But, it comes down to a simple fact really, SCO did not have enough money to buy all of UNIX, including the copyrights and just acted as a... no, I'm not trying to explain, you'll have to go and read it for yourself.
Best news of the day though! Big hurrah for PJ!
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Friday 11th June 2010 13:59 GMT Vic
@Fraser: Unix Copyrights.
The background to this is very simple indeed.
The Santa Cruz Organisation (SCO) wanted to buy the whole Unix business from Novell, but couldn't afford it. So instead, they bought the distribution rights. They sold packaged Unix, and were supposed to pass all the proceeds to Novell. Novell would then return 5% of that as a fee for doing the boring selling stuff.
Caldera - a Linux distributor - bought that business from SCO and then - this is the confusing bit - renamed themselves "The SCO Group". These two companies have both gone by the name "SCO", and that confusion appears to be deliberate.
NewSCO (formerly Caldera) then decided that they owned all the Unix copyrights (the ones OldSCO couldn't afford and never bought). they also decided that, as Linux had grown up so quickly, it *must* have stolen Unix code in it. This is the basis on which they tred to sue world + dog.
The two prongs of defence used so far are :-
1) Neither incarnation of SCO has ever owned the copyrights that NewSCO have been suing people over.
2) There is no stolen code in Linux anyway.
The SCO v Novell case is mostly about the first of these. Judge Kimball ruled a long time ago that SCO didn't own the copyrights it claimed, but the Court of Appeals said that a jury should have decided that. A jury did decide that - and it decided that SCO has never owned said copyrights.
The SCO v IBM case is primarily about the second of these items - that there is no stolen Unix code in Linux. It is somewhat mooted, though, because even if there were any, SCO has no standing to sue anyone anyway, because it doesn't own the code it claims to be trying to "protect".
There are further defences. An important one is that SCO was a Linux distributor, and distributed the alleged infringing code even some years after starting its lawsuits. Indeed, Caldera was the company that put most of it into Linux in the first place. They released this under the GPL - and therefore everyone is granted a licence to use and redistribute all this code anyway.
This last is important because the FUDsters are already firing up the talk of what might happen should Someone Evil(tm) buy Novell. the answer is simple - nothing. Novell have deliberately distributed all of this code under GPL, and that cannot be revoked just because the bad guys buy up the source.
Vic.
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Friday 11th June 2010 19:49 GMT Robert Hill
Quantum computing...
it would take quantum computers many decades to actually count the lawyers that IBM would throw at SCO should it have come to that. I've seen the legal department in White Plains, NY HQ, and the best way to imagine it is...well, remember the warehouse in the first Indiana Jones movie? Imagine a legal cubical farm of the same dimensions...
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Friday 11th June 2010 22:14 GMT John G Imrie
You might still do so
The Judge said that Novel has the right to stop SCO from suing IBM, and in fact can override SCO should SCO ignore Novell in this. This will cause SCO a few problems in the SCO v's IBM case as SCO no longer has any standing in that case to sue IBM.
Unfortunately for SCO and its current and previous Directors, nothing on earth except IBM's good graces can stop IBM's counter claims, which include Lanham Act clams.
From my understanding a claim under the Lanham Act is aimed not at the company but at the Directors, personally.
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Monday 14th June 2010 08:06 GMT Captain DaFt
One more act to go!
"Unfortunately for SCO and its current and previous Directors, nothing on earth except IBM's good graces can stop IBM's counter claims, which include Lanham Act clams.
From my understanding a claim under the Lanham Act is aimed not at the company but at the Directors, personally."
And THIS is the part that I've been wanting to see since the whole debacle started!
Now that SCO is now just a hollow, bankrupt shell, gutted by the bottom feeders that tried to use it as a Universal Extortion Tool(TM). I want to see those bottom feeders brought to a full accounting of their actions in court, then paraded before the public as an example to any scumbag that thinks about trying anything similar.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
