Novell Wins! Linux Wins! (SCO doesn’t)

By David Heath
Wednesday, 26 November 2008 16:04

Open Source

The five-year drama over ownership of SVRX copyrights and the underlying source of Linux ended with SCO winning nothing.  In fact legal attempts to quarantine aspects of the case so that they could be resurrected at later appeals were specifically rejected in the judgement.

From the judgement:

3. The remaining portions of SCO's claims for Breach of Contract (Count II), Copyright Infringement(Count IV), and Unfair Competition (Count V) are voluntarily dismissed with prejudice, without the possibility of renewal following appeal.

In researching this ruling, I happened across a webpage that only have been written by Alice and the Wonderland crew.  On it, SCO say this:

“This is the final judgment we have been working for since the day the summary judgment ruling was issued on August 10, 2007. It has taken a lot of work and some concessions to get this accomplished, but we are pleased we now have an appealable order, and we intend to commence that appeal process immediately.”

Everywhere I read, commentators say the same thing.  SCO is dead and buried – they have no chance of raising enough money to take this any further.

So, what now?  In summary, Linux has a legal separation from Unix; Novell & IBM didn’t steal any code and this whole mess has (probably) gone away for good.

Who wins?  Novell, IBM and the Linux community.

Who loses?  SCO (obviously!) and Microsoft (go do some research on a company called BayStar).