Novell reasserts Unix copyright claim

[Posted December 22, 2003 by corbet]

Novell is back with a new press release claiming, once again, that it never transferred its Unix copyrights to SCO. The press release is brief, but points to a PDF file containing some correspondence between the two companies. The actual ownership of these copyright could well blow up into a court battle in its own right. Meanwhile, the existence of these claims is not going to help SCO's shakedown attempts.

Novell has apparently put in a copyright registration covering the relevant Unix code; see this Groklaw article for the details.

Simply amazing

Posted Dec 22, 2003 19:54 UTC (Mon) by Ross (guest, #4065) [Link] (1 responses)

This is the biggest, most confused, disorganized, dishonest, and epic
story in the Linux world. Every week or two I marvel over the absurdity
of the whole thing and tell myself "ok, now it has reached the limits of
insanity, it can not possibly get any stranger" only to discover I was
completely wrong the next day. It's almost like this thing is being
scripted by soap opera writers.

The only thing I can say which covers my feelings at a high level is that
I hope that SCO's management and supporters are brought to justice and
that the whole scheme is exposed for what it is in the mainstream press.

The scary thing is that there are so many details and conflicting
statements it would take a book to do it justice.

Simply amazing

Posted Dec 22, 2003 22:02 UTC (Mon) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link]

It is amazing. It is the best case anyone could possibly have made for open source type development. It teaches you to NEVER touch a project with outside former copyright holders involved, or even who may believe to be involved.

Unless the situation is clarified by something as clear as the GPL, building on top of other people's proprietary code is a legal minefield, even if you believe to have paid for it.

Due to its open development history and the GPL, Linux itself seems pretty much in the clear of all this. The people who are really hurt are those who are unlucky enough to have signed a contract with SCO's predecessors, and tried to build on Unix. Not because they did anything wrong; but because someone with highly dubious claims now threatens to force them into a fully unnecessary legal battle.

It has been said before, but it can not be repeated often enough.

[And life will get that much more interesting a few years from now if Microsoft ever begins to charge royalties for its .NET patents - is there anything to stop them from doing that?]

Novell reasserts Unix copyright claim

Posted Dec 22, 2003 20:48 UTC (Mon) by armijn (subscriber, #3653) [Link] (3 responses)

Hmm, just a sick twist in my mind, what if Novell would go after Linux in a
few years because they got the copyright for UNIX? (Hey, no one expected SCO
to go after Linux about a year ago!)

Novell reasserts Unix copyright claim

Posted Dec 22, 2003 23:25 UTC (Mon) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] (2 responses)

Chances are that it won't be Novell that does SCO in, but IBM, and IBM's
position is that there aren't any copyright issues with the GPL use of
Linux. So Novell would probably be going against precedent that says that
Linux is free of UNIX entanglements, and that trying to restrict Linux
while distributing it (which they almost certainly will be, considering
their recent purchases) is copyright infringement. Furthermore, there's a
lot more of Novell to go after than there is of SCO, so a GPL case
against Novell would probably involve lots of copyright holders looking
for money.

SCO is almost certain to lose the IBM countersuit, and this means that
there will be established precedent for beating up anyone who tries to
assert ownership of Linux.

Novell reasserts Unix copyright claim

Posted Dec 23, 2003 5:16 UTC (Tue) by fLameDogg (guest, #11305) [Link] (1 responses)

SCO is almost certain to lose the IBM countersuit, and this means that there will be established precedent for beating up anyone who tries to assert ownership of Linux.

You know, when you put it that way, it makes Darl's leading with his chin seem almost heroic.

D'ohl's leading with his what?

Posted Dec 26, 2003 9:50 UTC (Fri) by leonbrooks (guest, #1494) [Link]

That's not a chin! (-:

Novell reasserts Unix copyright claim

Posted Dec 31, 2003 1:30 UTC (Wed) by Pani (guest, #18330) [Link]

The SCO CEO Mcbride caused a cluster mess when he was at Pointserve, where he canned the existing business plan, then paid $$$$$ to outside consultants for a bogus business plan that made money off of "internet advertizing" yes pop-ups. (completly new direction for Pointserve, no way to make money either) I talked to him for a hour when I worked at Pointserve, he is All Smoke, Mirrors, and buzz words. He was eventually canned and Pointserve programmers left demoralized. Sorry SCO.