Zombie SCO shuffles back into court seeking IBM Linux cash The SCO vs. IBM case has once again thrust up an undead limb up from deep beneath the soil. The case hinges on just who owns Unix and has been burbling along since before Facebook was founded. Most of the world's population long since lost interest in SCO's contention that IBM and Novell pinched bits of its code and tossed …
I thought SCO was a liquidated corpse,
You are not alone.
SCO seems to live on.
Hell, you could bury its corpse in the busted reactor at Chernobyl, and the motherfucker would rise from the dead.
Somehow, I think the only way to rid the world of this zombie is to encase it in concrete, load it aboard a capsule and fire the dammed thing into the sun.
what's the sun done to deserve that? Send it back to it's masters ....
It's already engulfed SCO once if you follow the corporate shenagans for long enough. After the "old" SCO sold its Unix biz it renamed itself to Tarantella which was then bought up by Sun who themselves were then bought up by Oracle.
I haven't been following the debacle, but if it has been liquidated, i.e. sold off, someone bought the rights some part of the corpse for a pittance and feel it is worth the gamble trying to sue. Could be a company with an excess of legal resources - or a corporation created by an IP legal firm with not enough work.
Or it could be someone with a grudge against IBM, since as an outside observer suing IBM again over this is like a typical basement dwelling geek picking a fight with Ronda Rousey.
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The SCO Guys only do this type of announcement when their execs have stock sales "pre-planned"; the TSG stock used to rise quite a bit with these threats.
/BTW, this is "The SCO Group", this is NOT the "original" Santa Cruise Organization that wrote UNIX, this is a Linux company in Utah that changed their name to "The SCO Group" to confuse the legal threat issue and sell their stock at inflated prices, their name used to be "Caldera Linux" before they became "The SCO Group".
Yes, but remember Novell is also in the middle of this, screwing up your nice clean description. Because it bought the original Santa Cruz rights along the way and sold Caledra the right to collect its fees. And while it is true that the courts have driven a wooden stake through the heart of that particular vampire, it does technically leave these three challenges open.
Yes, but remember Novell is also in the middle of this
Yes, but now Novell is part of Micro Focus,1 via its purchase by Attachmate and The Attachmate Group's subsequent merger with MF. Which also includes SUSE. Haven't seen any signs of TSG trying to sue us yet, but we all know the renewed suit against IBM is just a stunt (as others have noted, probably an attempt by major TSG shareholders to get the market to throw good money after bad, if it's not just a case of the legal team bleeding the corpse a little further).
And of course Micro Focus is older than TSG or the original SCO (by three years), and only a few years younger than UNIX itself.
So, yes, the history of SCO and the rights to SCO UNIX and related IP is complicated.
1Wikipedia says that Novell, Inc is still listed as a Delaware corporation, due to a pending (since 2010) suit against Novell's board over the acquisition by Attachmate. It appears to me that suit was summarily dismissed last November, but IANAL, and I have no idea whether Novell, Inc still legally exists.
Unix was created by employees of A T & T 's Bell labs. The University of California at Berkeley was a major contributor. Several companies hold source licenses, among them Microsoft, who sold a distribution called Xenix. The rights to that were sold to the Santa Cruz Organisation, who called it SCO Unix and later Open Server, before selling it to Caldera, which renamed itself the SCO Group, and old SCO became Tarantella.
Oh for fuck's sake.
(But props to Simon Sharwood for realising a definitive ruling wouldn't stop SCO.)
But would that work on the Lawyers? Cut off the head of one and two more arise...
As I recall, to kill the hydra, you needed to hit the heart. As you say, chop off a head, and more grow back. Unfortunately it's impossible to kill lawyers this way. There's no heart to drive your stake through.
Do flamethrowers work? Also Greek legend didn't mention the effect of nuclear weapons on the hydra, for some unaccountable reason...
"Unfortunately it's impossible to kill lawyers this way. There's no heart to drive your stake through."
There's a wallet, isn't there? IBM's legal team presumably reckon it is free money for them. I have to say I don't see the problem in "SCO" volunteering to pay IBM a fresh round of legal costs every year.
"It might have a point, given that the work IBM and Novell did on Linux is thought to have have helped the operating system reach its current status as a data centre darling."
For those of you who haven't been following this since the start it is worth reading the history on Groklaw.
This no longer about Linux, Novell settled that. So now they are going after IBM on contractual matters.
It was a failing business then (remember we are talking pre-2003, when the suit was launched (oh, how I remember) and it has failed ever since. IIRC IBM have been waiting for them to bring this on.
Nothing ever replaced or can replace it . Pamela ( whatever her real name is ) was doing a fantastic job.
When i saw a comment a bit further up i thought he meant it, that Grok was back up . It lays there , nothing new on . Yet i keep hope that one day that it will somehow come back up live.
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Well, don't say I didn't warn you (in 2010 as happens). I even got the coffee connection almost right: linky to post.
It's a shame El Reg took away the grave stone icon.
That would fit most non-legal professionals' definitions of "reasonable" to be sure; thus, it cannot happen in a court of law. ;-) However, the judge that gets saddled with this one may become annoyed enough to find some "lawyers" in contempt of court, we can hope. Surely IBM can have no dreams of ever recovering its legal costs dealing with this freak of the legal system.
"The case hinges on just who owns Unix"
- Not correct, that has already been settled years ago. Novell (now owned by Attachmate) owns Unix. SCOG was only a licensee, plus they also subcontracted as the agent to collect the license fees owed to Novell by the other licensees (e.g. IBM, Sun, etc.). The reason that SCOG declared bankruptcy was to freeze the case involving a suit with Novell (bankruptcy court overrides regular civil courts) days before SCOG was about to be handed its arse over breach of contract and walleting money that belonged to Novell. SCOG however was still solvent at that point. They then used bankruptcy status as a legal shield to let them do anything they wanted while their victims were prevented from retaliating. The execs and lawyers then ran through the assets of the company while protected from the shareholders, creditors, and anyone else who might have wanted to put a stop to the gravy train.
"animated only by the prospect of one day getting IBM to write it a cheque"
- IBM is also suing SCOG, see above for why this has been frozen. The IBM suit was the original one, but it got put on hold while SCOG sued Novell to try to force them to transfer ownership of Unix to SCOG (on the grounds that they couldn't sue world+dog without it).
SCOG's case involving Linux had already collapsed before that however, as they couldn't find anything they owned which had been copied into Linux.
SCOG's case with IBM revolves around the partnership their predecessor (the real SCO) had for a new version of proprietary Unix that was supposed to cover the full range of hardware from low end x86 up to large IBM servers. SCO was contributing their x86 expertise, and their marketing channel for the small business sector. IBM exercised their contractual right to back out of the partnership when SCO sold their Unix business to Caldera (who then renamed themselves the SCO Group - SCOG).
IBM saw the writing on the wall, and realized that Linux was going to fill the market niche that the proposed joint version of Unix was aimed at. The original SCO probably saw that as well, which is perhaps why they sold their Unix business.
The whole "unfair competition, etc." rubbish in SCOG's complaint has to do with IBM backing Linux instead of continuing with the Unix joint venture after SCO sold it to Caldera (who ironically were a Linux distro, similar to Red Hat or Suse).
SCOG sold off the remnants of their Unix business (SCO Open Server and SCO Unixware) to someone else a few years ago and have no real assets at this time. Their legal firm had signed up to handle the case to its conclusion in return for a lump sum (I think it was $30 million) plus a share of the promised loot, the prospect of which evapourated not long after (following which these same lawyers moaned that they were getting screwed).
Trustees are running SCOG, there's nothing left to fight over, and everyone wants the case to be wound up. However, the case can't get off the books until the lawsuits and counter-suits are settled. IBM didn't want to settle out of court because their reputation was at stake. They wanted to nail SCOG's hide to the wall. I won't be surprised if the trial is very short with SCOG's case getting tossed out, IBM's counter-suit winning, and SCOG's affairs being wound up and liquidated shortly after.
And after IBM gets done with them, Red Hat has their own case against SCOX The Undead for false advertising and deceptive trade practices, and asking for a declaration of non-infringement by Linux.
Of course once the Nazgul (aka IBM Legal) gets through with them Red Hat will be litigating against a greasestain on the Utah sands...
Novell (now owned by Attachmate
(now owned by Micro Focus)
) owns Unix.
Woo! I always said that one day I1 would own UNIX. Take that, doubters.
Technically, I believe what Novell-Attachmate-MF own are the copyrights to the AT&T UNIX source code. The UNIX trademark went to The Open Group (formerly X/Open). But IANAL and my understanding may be off.
1And a thousand or so of my close friends.
I notice this short article about the zombie firm we know and love is by none other than the creator of the BOFH. Perhaps if the BOFH were to pay a visit to tSCOg (if he can find them) he might:
1. Convince them of the error of their ways...with extreme prejudice.
2. Bend the to his own uses.
Votes on which one is more likely?
SCO prepaid their legal expenses. They paid David Bois millions of dollars and he promised to fight the lawsuit to the bitter end without any further payment. So the lawsuit will end when David Bois runs out of legal paths to pursue. Given David Bois' competence as a lawyer the suit might last until David Bois dies.
Given the competence of IBM's legal team I doubt that David Bois can ever win. His best hope is to convince IBM to settle for less than it would cost IBM in legal expenses for the ongoing fight.
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Steve Stites
io_uring is getting more capable, and PREEMPT_RT is going mainstream The Register 
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