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IBM vs. SCO: Now It's IBM's Turn (eWeek)
eWeek
notes
that IBM has filed a number of discovery motions in the SCO case.
"For years, it's all been about what The SCO Group could discover about IBM, Linux and Unix. The shoe's on the other foot now, as the U.S. District Court in Utah has revealed that IBM has launched discovery motions against Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and BayStar Capital.
In general, IBM is looking for detailed information about each company's recent dealings with SCO. This includes their financial relationships, and any access or use of Unix source code by their programmers."
Also, Groklaw examines a subpoena from IBM to Houlihan Valuation Advisers, a company that performed a secret evaluation of Caldera in 2001. "It's looking very bad for SCO." (Log in to post comments)
Who owns the Unix code? Posted Feb 24, 2006 16:09 UTC (Fri) by southey (subscriber, #9466) [Link] An interesting quote from first article by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols and Chris Preimesberger:"There were hundreds of encumbrances to open sourcing Solaris. Some of them we had to buy out, others we had to eliminate. We had to pay SCO more money so we could open the code -- I couldn't say anything about that at the time, but now I can tell you that we paid them that license fee to expand our rights to the code," McNealy said, referring to the February 2003 expanded Unix SVR4 license rights purchase from the SCO Group. This does not seem to gel with the information from the different lawsuits especially given that it is not clear if SCO or Novell owns the Unix code. Perhaps this is one of questions IBM wants to ask Sun.
Who owns the Unix code? Posted Feb 24, 2006 16:51 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] I don't see any particular conflict in that quote with what we know fromthe various lawsuits. Specifically, regardless of whether Novell sold SCO the code, or the right to act as their agent in licensing it (perhaps subject to Novell waiver, as they did with IBM), one thing that the transfer DID give SCO, undisputed in any of the lawsuits, is exactly that -- at minimum, the right to act as Novell's agent for the purpose of licensing the code. It's quite clear from the various legal documents that I've read, that regardless of intent to transfer the rights to the code itself, Novell clearly wasn't interested in haggling out licenses for it any longer, so sold that right to SCO, who in turn was supposed to return some of the fees to Novell, while keeping a portion for itself as in effect the "agent's commission". Or... the Asset Purchase Agreement could have never gone thru, as there was nothing to go thru. Whether the rights ultimately transferred or not is open to legitimate debate, but if one argues they didn't, then the right to act as agent certainly did, because otherwise there wouldn't have been anything left for all that SCO money that Novell got to buy. It had to buy something, and while SCO says it bought the Unix code, Novell's argument has always been that it bought only the authority for them to act as sole agent. In either case, Sun had to go thru SCO to relicense the code, whether SCO owned it or was only the sole agent for it, doesn't matter. Duncan
Who owns the Unix code? Posted Feb 24, 2006 19:02 UTC (Fri) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] But what is strange is that SCO had released most of their code under an open source license by that time. Would Sun's old license prevent them from excercising rights that everyone else had?
I believe Sun had said previously that the licensing deal was to obtain more up to date i386 drivers (though SCO has never been known for up to date hardware support). But now they are saying it was so they could open source the operating system.
Also, the deal wasn't only about licensing: though the terms weren't public we know that Sun got SCO stock warrants as part of the exchange. They apparently never used them. It's more than a bit unusual for a licensing deal to involve stock options.
Who owns the Unix code? Posted Feb 24, 2006 20:49 UTC (Fri) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] No SCO had released a very old version of the code it thought it had license to (SYS V4) under an open source license. If Novell's rights come out.. then SCO did not have the right to do this (although I doubt Novell will disagree now).
The Unix SYSV5 code was not released under an opensource license.
Who owns the Unix code? Posted Feb 24, 2006 23:14 UTC (Fri) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] My mistake. Thanks for the correction!
License fees Posted Feb 25, 2006 13:51 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Also note that, if Sun's money was destined to license Unix code so they could open Solaris, Novell would be entitled to 95% of it. In a brilliant move, Novell has asked SCO for their dues; but SCO has spent it in their not-so-brilliant lawsuits. This could be the straw that broke the camel's back.
Who owns the Unix code? Posted Feb 27, 2006 8:27 UTC (Mon) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link] Note that the APA explicitly *forbad* Santa Cruz from altering any SVR4 licences without Novell's permission.
They could migrate customers onto Unixware licences, but that was something different.
Cheers,
IBM vs. SCO: Now It's IBM's Turn (eWeek) Posted Feb 24, 2006 21:42 UTC (Fri) by daney (subscriber, #24551) [Link] Brillent! The Google ad at the top takes me here:
http://www.scoservice.com/?source=google.consult.image468
Although they are not exactly SCO, the fact that they are paying to advertise in relation to this article kind of amused me.
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