Uh-oh SCO! Judge says Novell owns Unix copyright

Brian Ambrozy 13 Aug, 2007 at 9:56am ET Article published in Tech

Sometimes it seems as if the SCO Unix litigation has been going on since I was a child. Protracted legal battles rarely keep an audience excited like this one has, however. In what only sounds like a death knell for SCO, Federal district judge Dale A. Kimball has ruled that SCO never actually owned the Unix copyright. ArsTechnica has the details.

Comments

13 Aug 2007 ~ 10:19am Thelemech Thanks for the update prime. I've been seeing this story on and off in the news for what seems like a thousand years --- IMO SCO never had a leg to stand on.
13 Aug 2007 ~ 2:44pm Leonardo Maybe that disgusting lawsuit mill will be shut down after all!

When was the last time they actually developed a new product?
13 Aug 2007 ~ 3:49pm Leonardo What makes this all so interesting, and also satisfying, is that not only have most of SCO's claims been tossed out, but one of those claims has actually been directed 180 degrees back at SCO. SCO will be WORSE off after this round of babble than before they started. What a collection of devious idiots. And I wonder: have their stockholders understood yet what type of company in which they own shares? SCO's share prices, believe it or not, have actually risen at times during the last two years.

Well anyway, not only did the judge rule that Novell does not owe SCO for certain proprietary licensure, but the opposite - SCO now owes Novell!

Judge Kimball has ruled that SCO owes Novell 95 percent of the royalties generated by the licensing of Novell's UNIX copyrights. The two most prominent SCO licensees are Microsoft and Sun, both of which develop operating systems that compete directly with Linux.

More here at Ars Technica
14 Aug 2007 ~ 1:49am BLuKnight I just want to know the date they close everything down so I can wait outside the SCO building and watch them take their sign down. I'm glad I don't have to pass that building to get to work anymore. It just makes me feel so dirty.
14 Aug 2007 ~ 7:55am Thrax You'll find that SCO's stocks took a 70% tumble on the 13th of August to 44 cents a share.
14 Aug 2007 ~ 11:47am muddocktor

Thrax wrote:

You'll find that SCO's stocks took a 70% tumble on the 13th of August to 44 cents a share.

I was just going to post this info but you beat me to it (read this morning on the Inq that it fell 71%). It's about time that those asshats close the doors on their fraudulent ripoff company and end this mess.
14 Aug 2007 ~ 11:49am Thrax SCOwned!
14 Aug 2007 ~ 2:10pm CB

Thrax wrote:

SCOwned!

One raspberry and one chocholate hazelnut, please.
14 Aug 2007 ~ 4:41pm BuddyJ I see what you did there.
1 Sep 2007 ~ 7:14am muddocktor And the SCOwned ones fight back to the bitter end, it looks like.

I just read this morning that SCO has filed an appeal to this decision. Like this couldn't be predicted.:rolleyes2

Die SCO, just die a horrible death!!
3 Sep 2007 ~ 1:13pm Tex SCO was wrong in this Novell battle. But most of you are so young you do not realize how much we gained from SCO and their versions of Unix and Xenix on the Intel platforms for many years. They were the pioneers.

Linux killed them...

They had a window of oppurtunity and its shut now... Just like Novells is getting slammed on their fingers now after being a dominent company...

You adapt and change or your doomed.... (wink) unless your Microsoft.

You guys are shouting DIE SCO DIE!! I say die Novell... I could HAPPILY live the rest of my life and never touch another novell box..... (smile)

Cowboy
3 Sep 2007 ~ 1:19pm Leonardo

You adapt and change or your doomed....

Exactly. SCO actually did bring innovation in the enterprise OS field - y e a r s ago. Then decided it was easier to make money by unleashing lawyers. It doesn't matter if they used to give free meals to orphans. They became parasites.
3 Sep 2007 ~ 3:16pm Tex Leo they had no other option... They were doomed.. You and I agree. With Linux they lost their market all together...

They had a very solid product on the Intel CPU's when unix was young..... The market changed... They needed to hook up with IBM or DELL or someone.....

But SCO "software" was sound...... Their lawsuit was just stupid....

Novell is crap and stupid also ! (wink)

Cowboy
3 Sep 2007 ~ 3:48pm Leonardo Ha ha, the only experience I have with Unix (none with Novell anything) was Unix 2.0. We had an AT&T 3B2 "mini-computer" which we accessed through a text screen on dumb terminals. Those were the days. May they rest in peace. I once improperly shut down the hard drive. It took the admin the whole weekend to do the restore from tape (another dinosaur tech). (still embarrassed about that)
3 Sep 2007 ~ 3:57pm Tex And I wrote a huge reservation system... A million lines of code....... 400 programs

And we had 48 users on a 386 running just fine 24/7 on that tiny box

Because of SCO UNIX....

The lawsuit was wrong..... Their biz practices were flawed!

But their product was valid in its day.

But the window is shut now !

Cowboy
11 Sep 2007 ~ 2:38am Leonardo Hey, Tex, we might want to decide which SCO we are talking about? Huh? Yeah, which SCO. You might find this interesting:

It was the original Santa Cruz Operation (Old SCO) that bought the rights to sell UNIX from Novell in 1995. Caldera, then a Linux company, later bought Old SCO's UNIX business, and it was after Darl McBride replaced Ransom Love at Caldera that it renamed itself SCO Group (New SCO) and sued IBM, Novell and Old SCO's former UNIX customers Autozone and Daimler Chrysler, and tried to collect licencing fees from 1,500 corporate Linux users.

Two SCOs? I can't vouch to the accuracy of that statement fact, but it would appear to doubly indict the current SCO. So according to this article, the current SCO bought a Unix operation but never paid a penny for license to sell Novell's code.

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