SCO's exact claims, as far as I can tell

SCO's exact claims, as far as I can tell

Posted May 30, 2003 2:17 UTC (Fri) by gdt (subscriber, #6284)
Parent article: The SCO case gets weirder

SCO seem to be making two claims:

1. IBM misappropiated code from the the SCO/IBM joint venture "Project Monterey" into AIX. In particular the 64-bit PowerPC code.

2. There is code from UNIX in the Linux kernel source.

   Some SCO statements claim this is from UnixWare 7. That is, intellectual property developed by SCO and not claimed by Novell.

   Other SCO statements claim this is from System V or earlier code. Novell says the I.P in System V is theirs. SCO say in return that the right to make contracts for access to the I.P gives them rights to sue for breaches of that contract.

   UNIX code earlier than System V was released under a BSD-style license contract by Caldera [the company this is now SCO], so it's unclear to me why SCO is making statements about pre-System V UNIX.

Please keep the two claims distinct in your mind.

If SCO do not hold the UNIX trademark, relevant patents, or the copyright to the code and as long as SCO and Torvalds have no UNIX licensing contract, I'm not sure how SCO intend to sue Linus.

As a final thought, the reassuring remarks from SuSE and Lindows about having contractural arrangements with SCO are less reassuring when you realise that, as contract law is the only lever SCO has, having no contract with SCO might be a better position.

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