"Ownnnnz!.....Ownnzzzzz!"
Posted on 07/06/2026 10:37:47 AM PDT by ShadowAce
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 CPUs. Those two companies, plus Intel and Sequent, created “Project Monterey” – an effort to create a unified version of UNIX that could run on multiple processors.
By 2001, Project Monterey was close to delivering a unified UNIX, an achievement made possible by blending code from IBM and SCO.
By then, a little project called “Linux” already ran on multiple processors. Big Blue decided Linux was the future and bailed from Project Monterey – then allegedly contributed some Monterey code to the open-source project and to its own AIX and Z operating systems. SCO felt it owned some of that code, so sued IBM.
SCO and its successors struggled to survive, but interested parties kept the lawsuit alive because the chance to emerge as owner of parts of the Linux codebase, and IBM’s code, had the potential to turn into a colossal payday.
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.
The Xinuos case has burbled along quietly since, and on June 22nd reached the milestone of a hearing.
The matter has become a little more modern, if only because this hearing was held online and the presiding judge appeared to unwittingly be on mute at one point. But the arguments otherwise seemed to revisit Project Monterey, debated the relevance of past litigation, contested who owned what, when they owned it, and how they could prove it. Xinuos argued IBM never had a license for SCO code. Big Blue argued that it did nothing wrong.
The core issue seems to be whether Xinuos even has the right to litigate the matter, or if some ancient legalese in the original agreements means the window for legal argument has long since expired.
The matter continues and appears likely to do so until either the heat death of the universe or the year of Linux on the desktop – whichever comes sooner. ®
"Ownnnnz!.....Ownnzzzzz!"
“He was describing copyleft, the term in the GPL that requires distributed derivative works to carry the same license. Ballmer’s fear was that it would spread: use a little GPL code, be forced to GPL the rest.”
“Microsoft can now ship a GPLv2 Linux kernel inside Windows and lose no sleep. WSL2 runs a real Linux kernel. Microsoft publishes its modified source to satisfy the GPL, the kernel runs as its own component, and much of Windows stays proprietary (all the cool new stuff is open source).”
This has details:
https://www.boxofcables.dev/stop-quoting-steve-ballmer/
From 20 years ago:
https://www.theregister.com/off-prem/2006/11/20/microsoft-makes-claim-on-linux-code/462436
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open-source_software_packages
I no longer do software, so I can’t verify usefulness.
Who was it that was all over that stuff.....
Tinfoil Turkey......
Brass Buzzard....
Aluminum Albatros...
I can’t seem to remember.
Wait, I thought the late Jimi Hendrix started Project Monterey, and Eric Burdon wrote a song about it...
I thought I smelled Dark McBride.
Stupid phone. I changed Dark to Darl like three times but it got the last laugh.
Well then they never agreed to a settlement if the future lawsuit has standing. If this is allowed everyone would settle then just sell your rights to the IP to someone else. Rinse and repeat.
That was my thought also. But then, IANAL.
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