Wednesday, August 15. 2007
So long, farewell and goodnight!
Don't worry I'm not referring to myself, but to that paragon of corporate virtue SCO. As an early adopter of Linux, I used Caldera Linux, and groaned when they decided to buy the rights to the lame duck that is UnixWare, but thought that a Linux company owning the rights to Unix could only mean good things for the future. This hope turned out to be misplaced when SCO claimed in 2003 that they had found Unix code "all over the place" (Chris Sontag) within Linux. They launched a law suit against IBM who they claimed had been the main perpetrator of the leak, and had also kicked them in the guts by canceling project Monterey which was supposed to reverse the decline of the Unix market. You can read the initial complaint here, and see some early reporting of the SCO claims in Linux Journal.
SCO has made many grandiose claims in press statements and interviews early in the piece and in hindsight were obviously trying to intimidate IBM into settling early. This would have validated at least the perception that the claims were valid and opened up a great little earner for SCO (called SCOSource) charging Linux users license fees for using Linux. This got up the nose of the entire Linux community (including me) and did not work on IBM, who were obviously very confident that they had not done any wrong as they decided to fight rather than settle. No actual proof is given by SCO for its claims and the court goes as far as remove a lot of the claims from the case due to lack of proper disclosure. In effect the chances of them winning were looking very slim.
In the meantime Novell (who had sold the rights to Unix to Caldera and are part owned by IBM) stepped in and claimed that while SCO owned the rights to exploit Unix, the copyrights were explicitly excluded. SCO, who seem to believe that their expertise in making baseless accusations to the press allows them to spot others doing the same, launched a suit against Novell to make them take back the hurtful things they had been saying
Well it turns out that Novell were being completely honest in their statements and the US legal system agrees! This effectively kills the IBM litigation as SCO no longer has anything to sue over. A quick look at the SCO financials shows that they are bleeding money, have continual revenue declines, no profits, and now infinitesimal hope of a big litigation windfall. Their shares have also tanked, which will lose them support in the financial market (and any chance of more capital to prop them up) and put them at risk of being delisted if they can't get their shares back over $1 per share quickly enough. There seems little hope of any other result than a fire sale of their assets or the entire company at a bargain basement price. To any of the people that bought SCO shares in the hope of a windfall win, suffer.
My only problem with this being the likely end of the matter is that the SCO v IBM trial will not go to judgment. There is no doubt in my mind that IBM would triumph, but it will not be explicitly ruled by a court of law. This leaves the whole thing as a not completely settled matter and leaves the door open for similar litigation in the future. We have recently seen Microsoft try to stir the Linux IP FUD pot. I will be interested to see how it plays out, and I am sure that if IB< does not already have counterclaims for costs open, then it will have soon. I hope there is a way that this can be resolved that absolves Linux of any taint on its IP character.
I have linked heavily in this article to Pamela Jones' GrokLaw site. I have been reading this site daily since mid 2003 and it has the most complete coverage of the SCO trials, as well as some other interesting IP trials and issues that you could wish for.
SCO has made many grandiose claims in press statements and interviews early in the piece and in hindsight were obviously trying to intimidate IBM into settling early. This would have validated at least the perception that the claims were valid and opened up a great little earner for SCO (called SCOSource) charging Linux users license fees for using Linux. This got up the nose of the entire Linux community (including me) and did not work on IBM, who were obviously very confident that they had not done any wrong as they decided to fight rather than settle. No actual proof is given by SCO for its claims and the court goes as far as remove a lot of the claims from the case due to lack of proper disclosure. In effect the chances of them winning were looking very slim.
In the meantime Novell (who had sold the rights to Unix to Caldera and are part owned by IBM) stepped in and claimed that while SCO owned the rights to exploit Unix, the copyrights were explicitly excluded. SCO, who seem to believe that their expertise in making baseless accusations to the press allows them to spot others doing the same, launched a suit against Novell to make them take back the hurtful things they had been saying
Well it turns out that Novell were being completely honest in their statements and the US legal system agrees! This effectively kills the IBM litigation as SCO no longer has anything to sue over. A quick look at the SCO financials shows that they are bleeding money, have continual revenue declines, no profits, and now infinitesimal hope of a big litigation windfall. Their shares have also tanked, which will lose them support in the financial market (and any chance of more capital to prop them up) and put them at risk of being delisted if they can't get their shares back over $1 per share quickly enough. There seems little hope of any other result than a fire sale of their assets or the entire company at a bargain basement price. To any of the people that bought SCO shares in the hope of a windfall win, suffer.
My only problem with this being the likely end of the matter is that the SCO v IBM trial will not go to judgment. There is no doubt in my mind that IBM would triumph, but it will not be explicitly ruled by a court of law. This leaves the whole thing as a not completely settled matter and leaves the door open for similar litigation in the future. We have recently seen Microsoft try to stir the Linux IP FUD pot. I will be interested to see how it plays out, and I am sure that if IB< does not already have counterclaims for costs open, then it will have soon. I hope there is a way that this can be resolved that absolves Linux of any taint on its IP character.
I have linked heavily in this article to Pamela Jones' GrokLaw site. I have been reading this site daily since mid 2003 and it has the most complete coverage of the SCO trials, as well as some other interesting IP trials and issues that you could wish for.
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