Posted on 07/17/2008 6:53:12 AM PDT by ShadowAce
The decision is in, and SCO has gone down in defeat. The U.S. District Court in Utah has ruled in favor of Novell in SCO vs. Novell, the keystone case in SCO’s long, and ultimately unsuccessful war against Linux.
The foundation of Judge Dale Kimball’s decision, that Novell, and not SCO owns the IP (intellectual property) rights to Unix, remains as solid as ever. Instead of showing that Linux violated SCO IP rights to Unix, SCO’s actions has lead to the revelation that it never owned the IP rights to Unix in the first place.
This, within the narrow confines of this trial, means SCO owes Novell over $2.5-million for its Unix deals. In a larger sense it underlines that SCO never had a leg to stand on its case against IBM and Linux.
Kimball did throw SCO a sop. He ruled that, as Pamela Jones, editor of Groklaw, described it, “UnixWare is the latest version of UNIX and that it was the foundation of all the other agreements, even though SYSV (System V Unix) was also involved, or so SCO thought. He accepted SCO’s argument that if SCO was wrong about owning the copyrights, and it was, then it’s too bad for the licensees — they just got less than they thought they were paying for, and that is a matter for them to work through with SCO.”
For most of SCO’s customers that will matter little. There is one special case, though, where this might matter a great deal. SCO sold Sun the IP rights to Unix (http://practical-tech.com/operating-system/linux/sco-gives-sun-blessings-to-open-source-solaris/). Sun then used this as part of the basis for its OpenSolaris release. In this case, Kimball didn’t simply rule that SCO hadn’t paid Novell the money it needed to from its post lawsuit Unix wheeling and dealings, the judge ruled that SCO had no right to sell Sun its Unix IP.
This puts the entire legal foundation of OpenSolaris, and Sun’s subsequent open-sourcing of the Solaris code under the GPL into question. Novell, according to sources close to the company, has not yet decided what, if any, action it will take against Sun.
What happens next? SCO could appeal, but the company is already in bankruptcy and recent attempts to refinance the company have come to nothing. This decision also points out that “SCO was unjustly enriched by retention of the revenue under the Sun Agreement and Novell is entitled to restitution.” This will count against SCO in its ongoing bankruptcy case.
If it were any other company, the only question would be who would end up with the company’s assets. SCO, however, has shown a remarkable ability to draw out its legal battles. For all practical purposes, SCO and its legal wars against Linux are over. Like a snake with a broken back, however, its thrashing may continue for a while longer. The real question is what will happen with OpenSolaris now.
Sun will either work out a deal with Novell (which would be smart for both companies) or OpenSolaris will get pulled. I think this author is making a mountain out of a molehill on the Sun front.
Sun is in no danger whatsoever. Anyone who knows the truth about Sun’s licensing history with Unix knows that full well. Remember, ATT and Sun were the ones that put their heads together to start doing what became UnixWare, long before SCO was even involved.
Santa Cruz is full of liberals anyway, and Utah is full of conservatives, so is San Diego (Sun). The good guys won this one.
I guess litigation is overrated as a corporate strategy...
So glad they got punk’d.
Wow. This brou-haha has got to be nearly ten years old by now.
Even back then, street corner opinion had been that SCO was attempting to remain solvent by turning its legal department into a profit center. They sued everyone in sight, up to and including IBM. Going after IBM was a mistake IMO. Big Blue did not back down and, with the vast legal resources they had at hand, succeeded in unearthing a lot of important archival data that ultimately de-railed SCO’s entire “profit through litigation” strategy.
At least that’s the way I read it at the time.
I can see the lawsuits coming if SCO survives bankruptcy. EV1Servers paid over a million dollars for this worthless SCOSource license.
Wait, just under a million dollars.
Sun Microsystems is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, not San Diego.
Took forever and didn’t need to.
Caused all kinds of upheaval and delays in IT projects and didn’t need to.
Whatever happened to allegations that SCO’s attack on a growing open source OS was a black ops perpetrated by Microsoft? A memo came to light several years ago linking Microsoft financially to SCO. Has the penguin proven to be the scary threat to Windows it was billed as?
Somewhat agree. This isn't the only author who's worried about Sun, though.
..which is totally irrelevant. SCO is based in Utah. This isn't the original SCO. They just have the name. The original SCO is now Tarantella.
Yep, Sun tried to use the legal system to keep their doors open, this whole strategy was a joke from day one. Its amazing they are still around even as a BK entity.
Adapt or die, and instead SCO decided to de-evolve into lawyers.
HA HA!
Sorry to be pedantic.
To quote 'Princess Bride':
"You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!"
To which I'd add: don't get in an intellectual property dispute with one of the largest patent portfolio holders in the world.
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