And in a desperate hail-mary attempt at extorting money from a reputable corporation, yet another pathetic patent troll...
Zombie ‘who owns Unix?’ lawsuit comes alive again
The ancient dispute over ownership of UNIX, and perhaps Linux too, has returned to court. Again. As The Register has explained many, many, times since this matter first went to court in 2003, the roots of the case are the 1998 alliance between IBM and a company called the Santa Cruz Operation which sold a version of UNIX for x86 …
-
-
-
Monday 6th July 2026 12:30 GMT Jonathan Richards 1
SCO v. IBM
That case was never about patents. SCO alleged that it owned the copyright to Unix, and that IBM had violated the copyright. It turned out that SCO didn't own the copyright, only a gig to collect licence fees and keep some commission. It was always a lame attempt to extort some money from IBM (whose lawyers were, in those days, referred to as the Nazgûl, so good luck with that) and possibly to derail Linux, as in the episode where SCO offered to sell licences for Linux.
The sorry tale was documented at Groklaw, and I was about to put a link in, but groklaw[.]net seems to have been taken over by someone punting crypto casinos. My day has just become a bit more dystopian.
-
Monday 6th July 2026 19:56 GMT Jamie Jones
Re: SCO v. IBM
Weirdly, it still works if you go here: https://www.groklaw.net/index_php.html
and here: https://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index_page-20031016162215566.html
-
Monday 6th July 2026 12:34 GMT retiredFool
No kidding. Just saw FIFA bow to trump on the suspension of Balogun, a US birthrighter no less, you know a guy trump just tried to make a non-citizen. Trump is so what gets him what he wants now.
To me the answer to this IS simple. Belgium, Spain & Portugal should all take a flight to the EU and have the finals there amongst themselves. No USA. Walk away. I'm sure donnie would have an epic tantrum, and really given this toss of the rules, does anyone now believe the ref-ing at the final games will be by the book. Has anyone looked to see if there was a pattern of ref-ing at the US games to date that ensured a victory. God if soccer can't escape the orange clown, the world is screwed.
-
Monday 6th July 2026 13:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
We are going off-topics here, but FIFA is a bunch of corrupt people. FIFA is absolutely on par with Trump, regarding morality. If a soccer team even tries to clash with FIFA it will be utterly destroyed, so no one will do it. And anyway why should a team try and fight the system? They all need this multi billionaire scam to live on or professional soccer would die. And maybe be reborn as a true sport, as it was some 50 years ago.
-
Monday 6th July 2026 16:00 GMT retiredFool
Well as I said, I think Belgium, Spain & Portugal should pack it up and go play the finals in Europe. I'll even offer a finals approach. Belgium hosts Spain/Portugal, Spain hosts Portugal/Belgium and Portugal hosts Spain/Belgium. All in large venues with lots of cheap seats for the common people. If any of the teams score at least 2 victories, they are the winner. If all 3 take one win, they play another round of 3 until someone gets at least 2 wins.
I'll add if Balogun was ethical, he'd decline to play in the match.
-
Monday 6th July 2026 22:42 GMT Michael Hoffmann
You actually repeated your short list twice and left out France. Any reason for that? Francophobia? I mean, currently they look the most stable run-away winner.
Also, what about the vikings? They way they've been playing, as of writing this, I have that one video of The KLF and What Time Is Love in front of my mental eye.
EDIT: Sorry, I mean the song America What Time Is Love
-
Tuesday 7th July 2026 09:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
What about the fact that the red card was utterly inconsistent? Messi and others did the same thing and were often not called at all. Balogun was the only player given a red card for it this World Cup.
The reffing this time around has been horribly inconsistent between games and different refs (and once or twice in a game to the point where I wondered if the ref took bribes).
-
-
Monday 6th July 2026 18:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
"FIFA is absolutely on par with Trump, regarding morality. "
Not so. AFAIK, FIFA's not a serial bankrupt or a convicted felon or a sex offender. Mind you, i suppose it's toss up whether Infantino or Trump is the bigger shameless grifter.
WTF does this have to do with ambulance chasers and zombie lawsuits over a long-dead OS?
-
-
Monday 6th July 2026 15:52 GMT Benny Cemoli
So the title of this article is, "Zombie ‘who owns Unix?’ lawsuit comes alive again" and you somehow manage to shoehorn two totally unrelated and irrelevant topics (Trump and FIFA) into the comments. How pathetic. I'd say take your meds because your derangement syndrome is showing but I don't know how well that would go over with the moderators. But really, does every comment section have to have someone injecting Trump into the discussion no matter how irrelevant he is to the topic at hand?
-
-
Monday 6th July 2026 22:25 GMT ChoHag
Discussion? In MY elreg comments?
Du vill keep ze talking subject onto ze topic zat is permitted citizen.
And if there's even the vaguest chance to insinuate that you're not allowed to insult the orange sheister it will be leapt upon, no matter how off-topic (sounds familiar...).
The rapist warmongering grifter is NOT to be made into a mockery.
-
-
-
-
-
Monday 6th July 2026 07:53 GMT steelpillow
The ticking clock
Exiting Xinuos products can traditionally be hard to migrate into modern environments. VMs are replacing the hardware, but ancient 32-bit Unices running ancient in-house and long-lost proprietary code has been the "not worth it" blocker. Now, vibe coding offers a great way to cover the heavy-lifting code decompile/rewrites and is improving fast; who isn't going to go that road.
Xinuos is watching the clock ticking down on its extortionate licensing revenue. This is just more death throes of the last head on the dragon.
-
Monday 6th July 2026 08:09 GMT EricM
I'm confused
> The case and its successors ended in 2021, with a settlement that saw litigants agree to end the matter without IBM admitting fault.
> But by then, SCO had sold its software to a biz called Xinuos that decided to fight on.
So, what is it:
Did SCO accept the settlement for a software that was already owned by Xinuos at that point?
Did SCO accept the settlement for a software it still owned own at that point, then sold it and Xinuos now tries to somehow "un-accept" the settlement?
-
Monday 6th July 2026 12:24 GMT steelpillow
Re: I'm confused
I recall a somewhat chaotic situation in which one greedy idiot after another threw money at the litigation until they ran out. When the last idiot ran out, the litigation died. There never was a settlement as such, other than the lawyers' fees.
Xinuos have been reading too many Dracula stories.
-
Tuesday 7th July 2026 13:58 GMT Flocke Kroes
Re: So, what is it
SCO died long ago. Their business went to Tarantella. A company call TSG (The SCO Group) called themselves SCO to look like they had standing to litigate. TSG went bankrupt and a trustee was appointed. The trustee was legally required to create a creditor list - which he did in the most expensive way possible. He used every cent TSG had to hire the bankruptcy judge's law firm to do that work and any other work he could convince the judge was justifiable. When the trustee had exhausted every asset TSG owned (and the revenue held in trust for Novell) he started selling things TSG (and SCO) never had like to copyright to Unix and the right to litigate. I remember Xinuos in the list of bridge buyers but I do not know which bridge they bought.
I do not remember a settlement. It would not have been with SCO or TSG. I have confidence in IBM's lawyers. I am sure that whatever the settlement was IBM paid nothing and the other party permanently abandoned their doubly fake standing to litigate. This could be one of the other bridge buyers or the one that settled claiming the settlement does mean what it clearly says. Sometimes convicts write complaints in crayon* because they literally have nothing better to do.
* because they are not allowed sharp objects.
-
Monday 6th July 2026 08:43 GMT alain williams
Come back Groklaw
Pamela Jones explained what was going on in a way that was understandable to non lawyers.
-
Monday 6th July 2026 12:31 GMT steelpillow
Re: Come back Groklaw
It's 20 August 2013, I'm watching PJ say goodbye and go off-grid for her own safety.
As Wikipedia currently puts it (they have a link to the original post):
a final article appeared on Groklaw, explaining that due to pervasive government monitoring of the Internet, there could no longer be an expectation of the sort of privacy online that was necessary to collaborate on sensitive topics. Citing the closure of Lavabit earlier that month, Jones wrote "I can't do Groklaw without your input.... and there is now no private way, evidently, to collaborate." and "What I do know is it's not possible to be fully human if you are being surveilled 24/7... I hope that makes it clear why I can't continue. There is now no shield from forced exposure."
-
-
Monday 6th July 2026 08:50 GMT JimmyPage
In other news
The UKs Attorney General has been instructed to lay proceedings against the US government for
"The divers and repeated use of His Majesties Common Law of England, most egregiously exploited in the Supreme Court therein and without honour or restitution to the originating party as is the ancient custom and practice of this land".
Because as quoted last week, the US still relies on English Common Law (and why not, it's clearly superior to anything they have cooked up in 250 years).
-
Monday 6th July 2026 09:26 GMT Bebu sa Ware
Re: In other news
> the US still relies on English Common Law
I think California and some of the south western state might be based on Spanish law (inheriting some of the Napoleonic code?) Florida was also originally a Spanish possession and the Lousiana purchase from France during Bonaparte's reign might mean some of the states there have some aspects of the French legal system.
I would have thought CIIIR might be better advise to pursue treason and rebellion cases against the illicit and seditious administrations in the US. Let Harry and Meghan rule over that rabble.
-
-
-
Monday 6th July 2026 13:02 GMT Sproggit
If only it were that simple...
The SCO Group and their counsel, BSF, largely refused to disclose any of the infringing code *in the actual, original court case*, but that didn't prevent them from using every last device the law offered to prolong their case in an attempt to extort IBM.
The two most likely causes of infringement that the Zombie could bring in this case would be either copyright or patent infringement.
The problem for IBM is that, in particular with the case of source code [but also books and documents] the law recognizes that "derivative works" can infringe an original copyright.
So to translate: if there were lines of code in the 2006 Linux kernel that infringed a TSG copyright, and if those lines of code were iterated and rewritten over the intervening 20 years, it would still be legally possible for the 2026 Linux kernel to infringe, *provided* the Zombie could show - kernel version by kernel version - how their original code transformed down through the versions and how it still existed in the kernel today.
I would agree with anyone whose response is that this seems like a bit of a tall order, but, I think, the news might be better for IBM this time around.
Here, IBM can use the intervening 20 years as another fact in their favor - and they could go to a Judge and say, "Look, in order for us to be able to respond, the plaintiff is going to need to show us the file, lines and origin of any and all infringing material."
If I had one concern about the way that the otherwise superb Judge Kimball handled the original case, it was that he afforded TSG too much latitude to make their case. For example, having filed suit, they then attempted to place such a huge discovery burden on IBM - by demanding full access to IBM's own AIX source code for example - that IBM were forced to go back to court and say, "Yoiur Honor, the plaintiff is asking for discovery of *our* source code to prove their case... but they have been telling the press and the world that they have the evidence in the source code they control and the Linux kernel. So they don't actually need access to our AIX5L code to use as evidence..."
I think that what Judge Kimball was doing was trying to make the case appeal-proof... so it will be interesting to see how a Court views this today.
-
Monday 6th July 2026 13:49 GMT Spazturtle
Even if you replace all the code it is still considered infringement, the law takes a ship of theseus approach to it.
This is why Apple signed a licencing agreement with Imagination Technologies for this GPU tech. Apple developed this GPUs by over several generations replacing parts of the licenced PowerVR GPUs with their own design until no PowerVR parts where left. Apple then tried to stop paying licencing fees but resumed after Imagination filed a lawsuit.
-
-
Monday 6th July 2026 11:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Pretty sure Novell owned UNIX, and anything SCO created they licensed through their own Linux distribution.
It was never shown if code that is similar in SCO Unix was simply copied from Linux. Which seems the obvious direction source code would flow, given one of the two is completely closed source.
-
Monday 6th July 2026 12:13 GMT Sproggit
The Novell Angle
Unfortunately, the original Groklaw web site has been lost and is now some weird crypto/gambling site [*don't* go there...]... but the Novell dimension to the story went [approximately] like this...
The ownership of the original Unix SVR4 code bounced around between different companies, but ended up with Novell, who branded it Unixware, in partnership with AT&T whose Unix System Laboratories developed the original code. The code then went through a succession of companies - the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO, aka OldSCO), Caldera Systems, Caldera International and "The SCO Group" (TSG, *not* SCO/OldSCO).
However, the documentation that came to light through the original court case, when Novell entered the litigation in response to TSG making materially false claims before the court [and with a helpful nudge from IBM ;o) ] (and at which point TSG promptly turned around and sued them as well) Novell showed that what they had sold and what TSG came to inherit was a "non-exclusive right to take forward and develop", not outright ownership of the code. One of the critical dimensions of the evidence in support of the Novell/IBM position was that TSG became Novell's agents - they were charged with obtaining all the licensing fees from existing customers and then remitting 90% of those fees back to Novell, while keeping 10% as an agent's fee.
The problem that IBM/Novell had was that Novell were unable to put their hands on a single, definitive document that set out the terms of the sale. They did have some very strong evidence in their favour - minutes of a Novell Board Meeting around the time of the sale that set out exactly this position. Eventually, on August 10, 2007, the United States District Court in Utah issued a ruling that Novell had retained ownership of the System V UNIX copyrights and that SCO was in breach of its covenants to provide Novell with the previously agreed royalties to the Unix technology Novell had originally sold to SCO.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the court, TSG received a cash injection of some $50 million from Microsoft - a "licensing fee" - who clearly saw TSG's move as being a way to cripple Linux... which was of course an existential threat to Windows. (In case you're wondering, that "licensing deal" was the origin of WSL - Windows Services for Linux - because Microsoft had to be able to show their shareholders that the $50MM they spent actually had a benefit for Microsoft...).
The main reason that the case dragged on for as long as it did was that TSG simply refused to clearly set out which lines of code in the Linux kernel were infringing. At one point lawyers for IBM - from Cravath, Swaine and Moore (CSM, aka "The Nazgul") argued in court that what TSG were doing was basically throwing IBM a document the size of the Nieman-Marcus catalog (a *huge* home shopping business in the US) and saying, "The infringing code is in there - you find it!" [The document being all the source code for the kernel].
IBM maintained that in order for them to be able to bring a defense to court, TSG would have to identify :-
Each file in Linux containing infringing code
The line or lines of code so infringing
Evidence that the code was introduced to the Linux source by an IBM employee...
Very early on, TSG tried to give some "examples" of infringement - not in front of the court, but in shareholder calls. The Groklaw community got hold of the examples and very quickly proved that the source had not been IBM but in fact other vectors, at which point TSG changed tactic and refused to disclose more.
This went on for literally months and months, but gradually, TSG's business model faltered and they ran out of cash. They attempted to successively narrow the case against IBM, until they went one step too far and all that was left in their case could be presided over by a judge in a bench trial. This was a critical error, because TSG's entire strategy was to rely on their counsel - Boies, Schiller & Flexner, led by the famous David Boies - in front of a jury...
On the eve of the trial, TSG declared bankruptcy, thinking they would be able to use Chapter 11 to regroup and change their tactics... but they ended up in front of a Bankruptcy judge who I have to say didn't seem all that trustworthy. He quickly decided that what TSG needed was a Trustee... and, well, the Trustee really needed to have some legal experience, like, say another judge. At that point, don't you know it, "presto", a Trustee [and retired judge] was appointed... and that worthy proceeded to burn through all of TSG's remaining cash on what seemed like idiotic fees to his company, rather than paying out TSG's creditors.
The really terrible part about this stage of the story was that TSG had a bunch of creditors like a Mom+Pop pizzeria in the town where they were based, who were owed hundreds or thousands of dollars on account and who never saw a dime.
So when this trail went cold, TSG had failed to prove anything in court... They had been given more than ample opportunity to do so - and when they had gone public with examples, those code snippets were quickly shown to be entirely innocent and either not submitted by IBM and/or to have come from other sources. All the court rulings had gone against them...
We can only hope that this dies a similarly ignominious death...
-
Monday 6th July 2026 12:44 GMT Jonathan Richards 1
Re: The Novell Angle
That's a really excellent summary of a saga that had us appalled and fascinated for years. Many of us transcribed documents for PJ at Groklaw, and I remember that I did one in which the Novell executive who had done the deal with TSG (previously SCO) had been deposed. I can accurately recall my summary for the Groklaw post: "Sure, we sold Unixware to SCO, lock, stock and barrel. Except for the lock and the stock, of course, and we made sure that we kept control of the barrel."
-
Monday 6th July 2026 13:10 GMT Sproggit
Re: The Novell Angle
I was another of the many denizens who hung out at Groklaw on a practically daily basis, and, like you, transcribed documents and did research.
It was such a shame when the Lavabit issue came along and proved to be the "last straw" that prompted PJ to close down the project... though I'd corresponded with her privately through much of the saga and I'm aware that a fair bit went on behind the scenes and that she became concerned for her personal safety, so I wasn't surprised when it happened.
I doubt that Pamela would want to return to her keyboard now... but given the amount of time that has passed, it's quite possible that the community will be able to help if this case actually moves forward.
-
-
Monday 6th July 2026 13:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The Novell Angle
Yeah it was a mess. I still think that someone at SCO copied GPL Linux code into their internal source and by the time they realised, it was too late.
That’s why we never saw the list of copied files…. I suspect that they pulled in a whole bunch of Linux device drivers so they could run UnixWare on modern x86 boxes.
-
Monday 6th July 2026 14:06 GMT UCAP
Re: The Novell Angle
The problem that IBM/Novell had was that Novell were unable to put their hands on a single, definitive document that set out the terms of the sale.
Novell found a copy of the original Bill of Sale of Unix to Santa Crux Organisation (the predecessor of interest to SCO) which detailed exactly what was being transferred in the transaction. In summary (and going by memory) SCO have the right to use and evolve the source code, however all copyright was retained by Novell.
Once this document was submitted to the court, SCO's case was essentially dead in the water.
-
Monday 6th July 2026 16:57 GMT Sproggit
Re: The Novell Angle
Hmm...
I vaguely recall that the reason this was not immediately cut-and-dried [it got clarified by the Tenth Circuit on Appeal] was that the deal with Novell was split in to two parts.
The first part was the "APA" - the Asset Purchase Agreement - and this document explicitly *excluded* the copyrights that TSG would have needed to bring their case. However, there were multiple amendments to the APA, the 2nd of which had something to do with the clarification of Santa Cruz's rights to the code.
IIRC, in filings, TSG tried to argue that the 2nd Amendment had a different meaning to the one that Novell were trying to attach [note - Novell were in the room when the 2nd Amendment was reached, TSG were not...] and this formed the basis of their complaint/escalation.
This is why my admittedly not-very-clear previous post said that Novell were not able to immediately put their hands on a single document the unequivocally established the facts. Well, that and history - had that been true, the *years* of litigation would not have been necessary.
Irrespective... I hope this latest attempt will end in Rule 11 sanctions for the plaintiff's counsel.
(Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a party's counsel are required to sign each submission to the Court as being good faith and factual. A counsel filing a bad-faith, frivolous, harassing or factually unsupported claim can be guilty of breaching Rule 11 and the Court can impose sanctions including monetary penalties.)
-
-
-
-
Monday 6th July 2026 18:48 GMT Steve Davies 3
Not this again...
As has been said already this was chronicled on Groklaw is gory detail. The contents of 'errno.h' was analysed ad infinitum and SCO failed to convince judge after judge that their claim was valid.
At the end, the [cough][cough] trustee made millions from the case flogging a dead horse.
Personally, the 'we own Linux' horse fled 20+ years ago and is in a different galaxy now. I home this new bunch of chancers get sent packing pronto along with a hefty legal bill that they must pay on the day.
-
Monday 6th July 2026 19:28 GMT Darth.0
Re: Not this again...
You would think that after the judge wrote this about SCO's suit:
"Certainly if an individual was stopped and accused of shoplifting after walking out of Neiman Marcus, they would expect to be eventually told what they allegedly stole. It would be absurd for an officer to tell the accused that 'you know what you stole I'm not telling.' Or, to simply hand the accused individual a catalog of Neiman Marcus' entire inventory and say 'it's in there somewhere, you figure it out.'
They'd come to their senses.
-
-
-
Tuesday 7th July 2026 12:10 GMT Sproggit
The original complaint
Actually, if you read TSG's original complaint (courtesy of the WayBack Machine):-
https://web.archive.org/web/20170704181155/http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040704170212250
you'll find their characterization of Project Monterey, a joint initiative between IBM and The SCO Group to develop a 64-bit version of a UNIX-based operating system for "Intel-based processing platforms." Here's the actual text of the complaint:-
" Project Monterey
50. As SCO was poised and ready to expand its market and market share for UnixWare targeted to high-performance enterprise customers, IBM approached SCO to jointly develop a new 64-bit UNIX-based operating system for Intel-based processing platforms. This joint development effort was widely known as Project Monterey.
51. Prior to this time, IBM had not developed any expertise to run UNIX on an Intel chip and instead was confined to its Power PC chip.
52. In furtherance of Project Monterey, SCO expended substantial amounts of money and dedicated a significant portion of SCO’s development team to completion of the project.
53.Specifically, plaintiff and plaintiff’s predecessor provided IBM engineers with valuable information and trade secrets with respect to architecture, schematics, and design of UnixWare and the UNIX Software Code for Intel-based processors.
54. By about May 2001, all technical aspects of Project Monterey had been substantially completed. The only remaining tasks of Project Monterey involved marketing and branding tasks to be performed substantially by IBM.
55. On or about May 2001, IBM notified plaintiff that it refused to proceed with Project Monterey, and that IBM considered Project Monterey to be “dead.” In fact, in violation of its obligations to SCO, IBM chose to use and appropriate for its own business the proprietary information obtained from SCO."
The context here is critical in a technology sense, perhaps less so in a legal sense.
There are a couple of critical issues with the text of that initial complaint. The first is that "The SCO Group" - the party bringing the complaint - continue to refer to "OldSCO" and "The SCO Group" interchangeably, using "SCO" as the label, in a largely successful attempt to bamboozle the Court in to thinking that TSG had a bigger role in this story than was actually the case.
The second is an attempt to convince a (non-technical) Court Judge that somehow there is arcane magic involved in getting a 64-bit version of a "UNIX-based operating system" to run on an Intel-based platform. Here's why that is utter tosh:-
1. IBM invented the "PC platform" and arguably had more and better knowledge of getting code to run on it with the exception of maybe Microsoft and Intel. Certainly they had a much better understanding of the platform than any version of SCO - ***it was their frikkin' platform***...
2. Absent all the other factors required, the steps needed to get a 64-bit version of a UNIX-like operating system running on a 64-bit PC platform would be something approximately like this:-
2.1. Start with 64-bit hardware running a 32-bit operating system. Ideally that would be 32-bit UNIX, but it didn't have to be. [ This was readily available - i.e. Xenix, etc.].
2.2. Write a C compiler that produces 64-bit code, taking advantage of new instructions and new address space. [ This has been done many, many times as basic C compilers [such as gcc] get ported to new hardware platforms...]
2.3. One-at-a-time, write the 64-bit code files needed to get a bootable kernel for the target platform.
2.4. Copy the kernel files to a target/destination boot disk, including a utility to lay down a 64-bit boot sector.
2.5. Once you have enough of the basic files needed to create a bootable kernel and shell, boot your hardware with the new image...
2.6. The first thing you do once you have a running image is write a 64-bit C compiler for the new platform, along with it's tools...
2.7. Port the 64-bit compiler to the new prototype OS...
2.8. Start taking your 32-bit source code, one application at a time, and recompiling it using the new 64-bit compiler to build out a fully-featured OS...
2.9. Package up your 64-bit files with a 64-bit installer...
2.10. Perform an all 64-bit test install to make sure everything works.
At this point, you have "enough" of a 64-bit platform that you can start porting code in earnest. As the complaint from TSG notes, you can start with library files and build out from there.
But for SCO to try and claim that they had unique knowledge and expertise and it would have been impossible for IBM to create a 64-bit version of UNIX able to run on the Intel platform is just such utter, utter tosh it's difficult to know what they could possibly have been thinking.
Interestingly, you will see if you search Groklaw that IBM only really objected to TSG's egregious motion practice, they did not waste their time trying to promote their possible defenses ahead of the trial. So we don't actually know how much fun IBM would have had in cutting this nonsense to pieces...
I offer all of this as interesting context, because though you might not have realised it, the very heart of TSG's complaint against IBM was that only they, not IBM, had the skills and experience needed to "port" a UNIX variant from 32-bit to 64-bit.
Curiously, for all you nerds out there... the first 64-bit [stable] Linux kernel was the 1.2.x, series [for the DEC Alpha [on which PowerPC was based], which released in 1995 - 8 full years before the TSG lawsuit against IBM dropped. Which, if any evidence were needed of the falsity of TSG's complaint, might be a pretty big clue.
-
-
Monday 6th July 2026 22:27 GMT Doug 3
And yet somehow it is so very likely that Microsoft is entangled in this behind the scenes. Just as they used millions of Microsoft dollars to push their fraudulent "Get the Facts" campaign against Linux and spent lots more feeding it into back banking channels to fund SCO while they were filing fake suits against corporations using Linux.
And this whole thing really exists because Microsoft OS's sucked so much a Finnish guy started writing his own OS for personal computers and teamed with the GNU project for the software outside of the kernel. It's 2026 and I'd heard recently a complaint of how many times a persons computer was rebooted during a Microsoft Windows Update. Same lipstick on a pig it seems and it's likely the same behind the scenes underhanded dealings are going on in this UNIX case against IBM.
-
Wednesday 8th July 2026 17:08 GMT Antron Argaiv
"And this whole thing really exists because Microsoft OS's sucked so much a Finnish guy started writing his own OS for personal computers"
That, in fact, is how I ended up becoming a Linux user.
We in Data General engineering had just been given Sun workstations, running ViewLogic, to replace the in-house schematic capture tools, which ran only on DG systems. This would have been around 1990. We taught ourselves Solaris, and I was so impressed with UNIX, I began to look for a version that would run on the PC, and came across comp.os.linux. The rest is history, except for this example, which convinced me that Linux made more of the PCs capability than Windows ever would.
It was 1994, and I was at a new job. I was given a 486 machine running Win3.1, QEMM, and a copy of the PC version of ViewLogic. Which crashed whenever I tried to have more than 2 pages of the schematic open at the same time. We did have a Sun machine in the (noisy) lab, running the UNIX version of ViewLogic, and it did not crash when I opened multiple schematic pages. Being someone who is intolerant of tools that don't work well, I did some investigation into the X Windowing System, and discovered that I could run an X terminal on my PC (as part of a Linux install) and connect it over the Ethernet to the Sun. In that way, I could (and did) sit at my desk, using ViewLogic on the Sun. I bought myself a second HDD, installed Linux on it, and set up my PC to dual boot. So, there I was, able to open as many schematic pages as I wanted, using my PC as an X terminal, thanks to software written by some grad student in Finland and a bunch of his fellow hackers. And being FAR more productive than I was when using Windows (which I realised, was not fit for purpose as an operating system).
The rest, as they say, is history. It's been Linux on and off since then, and now (Mint 22.3) 100% Linux.
-
Thursday 9th July 2026 05:12 GMT Eric 9001
>"Get the Facts" campaign against Linux
It was against GNU/Linux, although to utter that name would lead to their loss, therefore they wrote "Linux".
>Microsoft OS's sucked so much a Finnish guy started writing his own OS
That is not true - Linus originally used MINIX, not windows.
Linus got burned by how MINIX was proprietary software and therefore he decided to announce that he was writing his own OS (that wouldn't be big and professional like GNU) and then proceeded to start with the kernel (he never got around to the remaining 90% of an OS), but he originally didn't get very far, as he selected a proprietary license (nobody was interested in another proprietary kernel).
Since then, he has been burned by proprietary software over and over again - he has never learned that with proprietary software, everyone always gets burned.
He only saw success when he re-licensed to the GPLv2-ambigious in 1992, which GNU in good faith decided to port every last GNU package to work with Linux as well (despite all that work done for him, he authorized Linux becoming proprietary software again in 1996, with the inclusion of the first of many proprietary programs, without source code).
Others then released GNU/Linux distributions and many developers tested them out and determined that if Linux wasn't so lacking, the OS would work properly - which attracted thousands of developers to work on Linux.
>teamed with the GNU project for the software outside of the kernel
There really wasn't much teamwork - most Linux developers refused to work together with GNU developers (BSD developers would work with GNU, but not Linux ones - as they considered themselves "Linux users").
Regardless, GNU developers didn't need much help to implement support for Linux's SYSCALLs in glibc and Linux's /sys, /proc and /dev interfaces in packages where relevant.
Linux developers even forked glibc into "Linux libc", which was a complete waste of time, as they weren't particularly good at developing a libc and in the end, all the work had to be discarded, as they didn't bother to keep the licensing in order.
GNU software isn't just outside Linux - it's inside Linux as well - if you want to compile and therefore to be able to use Linux, you'll also need GNU bison, binutils, make, cpio, tar, bash, bc and GCC to build all of it.
After all, you can't have a C kernel without a C compiler, a build system and a linker - none of which existed as free software before GNU developed them and released them.
-
-
Monday 6th July 2026 22:37 GMT Robert Halloran
UNIX copyrights
As is well known , UNIX came from AT&T, but after the telco breakup, they unsuccessfully tried to market their own computers (I was there late 80s..), and eventually joined forces with Novell to create Unixware and Unix System Labs (visited the Summit NJ site a few times), then eventually sold their half *to* Novell (Dennis Ritchie quoted the OT verse about Esau selling his birthright at the time; RIP sir...).
Santa Cruz Operation was an ISV that did an x86 port of the legacy-AT&T code; when Novell began to flounder in the wake of WinNT, they tried to buy out the copyrights but couldn't come up with the cash; Novell gave them the business of collecting the royalties from all the other licensees and keeping a 5% admin fee.
Linux started eating the *ix-on-Intel market, Santa Cruz did a deal with IBM to port UNIX to Itanium (Itanic...) which went nowhere. It was then bought out by a Novell spinoff Caldera, which rebranded itself as SCO. IBM invoked the buyout clause of their joint contract to take their code & walk. It eventually ended up in AIX, along with some code from Sequent etc.
SCO/Caldera continued to flounder, then decided to sue IBM for infringement despite the techs telling the suits there was nothing to go after. It's dragged on for years now, and Xinuos eventually bought out the dwindling software business and left the bankruptcy trustee to continue the lawsuit. Apparently they haven't had any better luck in the market and opened their own case a few years back claiming infringement. They haven't had any better luck. Hopefully the Nazgul Horde will shortly eliminate them once and for all.
-
-
Tuesday 7th July 2026 08:17 GMT jake
"What this means for BSDs ?"
Same as it does for any other *nix. To wit, sweet fuck all.
These idiots have no case, the concept was never a case, the concept will never be a case. All it is going to do is drain the money out of the litigant's bank account and feed it to their landshark(s), just as it has every time it has managed to bully itself into a court of law.
-
Tuesday 7th July 2026 08:54 GMT R Soul
What this means for BSDs ?
Nothing.
When AT&T owned Unix, they sued UCB (University of California Berkeley) claiming BSD included AT&T source code from SysVR4, They lost. Bigly. While there was a teeny amount of AT&T code in BSD, it turned out there was far more BSD code in SysVR4 and AT&T was in breach of its licence from UCB. When they countersued, Novell - which by then had bought Unix from AT&T - decided to settle. One of the terms in that settlement was there would be no more lawsuits against anyone using or distributing BSD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc._v._Berkeley_Software_Design,_Inc.
-
-
Tuesday 7th July 2026 09:47 GMT jake
386BSD was first publicly available in early 1992 ... but if you knew who to ask (info easily found on Usenet), you could have had access to it's roots in 1990. Earlier, if you knew people at Berkeley.
I don't know if I'm happy that Linus didn't know this, or not ... one thing is very clear, though. If he had, our world would definitely be a very different place.
For the record, I use Slackware on the desktop, and one or another BSD on pretty much everything else.
-
Thursday 9th July 2026 05:21 GMT Eric 9001
BSD's have always been incredibly sloppy with licensing, thus I doubt those would have become popular if there wasn't a court ruling that there would no more lawsuits against anyone using or distributing a BSD.
Linux may not have been written, but GNU would have still existed - maybe Hurd would be GNU's primary kernel instead.
It wasn't about an "itch being scratched", it was about Linus being burned by how MINIX was proprietary software and deciding to start developing a clone of Unix kernel's, so GNU software and software for the GNU system could be run without MINIX.
-
-
Tuesday 7th July 2026 09:37 GMT jake
BSD started life at University of California, Berkeley, as patches and additional tools for Bell Labs Research UNIX V6. Some of these changes found their way back to Bell Labs and were rolled into V7, and some of V7 went into later BSD. BSD and UNIX swapped code back and forth for several generations, until AT&T's lawyers noticed that UNIX was worth some money, at which point the BSD source was eventually sanitized, with all AT&T code rewritten from scratch by around the 4.3BSDs. This lead to the versions known as 4.3BSDTahoe... and Net/1. Then 4.3BSDReno and NET/2. NET/2 led to the late, lamented 386BSD and then on to all the BSDs we have today, which at least to some degree continue the code swapping tradition, along wiith Linux.
By way of reference, the UNIX Wars occurred roughly between "lawyers" and "386BSD" in the above paragraph, with the small (now ongoing, again) footnote from an upstart company with an assumed (purchased) name, known as SCO, happening later. Hopefully, the latest Judge in this matter will take the litigant's lawyers aside and explain what kind of affect getting smacked with a Rule 11 frivolous litigation contempt charge would have on their career ...
Also note that several other large companies (most notably Sun Microsystems, HP, IBM and NeXT) and many Universities world-wide contributed to the BSD work.
It's a convoluted history.
-
-
-
Wednesday 8th July 2026 09:30 GMT JulieM
Simple solution
Some government somewhere in the world needs to annul whatever copyright subsists in the Original Unix Source Code, and declare it to be in the Public Domain within their jurisdiction. This would enable any respondent to a plagiarism claim to state that their work was based on a work that was already in the Public Domain somewhere in the world.
-
Thursday 9th July 2026 05:27 GMT Eric 9001
Re: Simple solution
As a work being in the public domain requires it either not qualifying for copyright, or the copyright expiring, that would require shortening the copyright term to some less ridiculous length, which is never going to happen (software won't be made to not qualify for copyright and the copyright term only ever gets longer, never shorter).
A work being in the public domain in some other country is not very useful if the work isn't in the public domain in the current country.
Provided copyright wasn't infringed in the process, plagiarism is not illegal, thus claims plagiarism can merely be ignored and not responded to.
-
