Court Rules: Novell owns the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights!

[gaf-jGWa+dQaaZtAfugRpC6u6w at public.gmane.org (Jerry Feldman)]

Look for SCO to sue Sun next. 
History:
	Caldera International acquired the Unix division from the Santa
Cruz Operation.
	The Santa Cruz Operation renamed itself Tarantella
	Caldera International renamed itself the SCO Group.
	Sun acquired Tarantella.

If Judge Kimball's ruling is upheld, which I am sure it will be, as he
has been very thorough, if SCO (Caldera) thought they were getting the
Unix IP when they purchased the division from The Santa Cruz Operation
then they may have legal grounds to sue Sun, which will be in a
different venue. 

Note that the  SCO vs. Novell Dogbert Hearing is Sept 11, with the
actual trial beginning on September 17th. 

Essentially, the SCO vs. IBM trial is the one with the most impact on
Linux because it is in that case where SCO claims that IBM contributed
Unix IP to Linux (specifically JFS, NUMA, and SMP).  It is the IBM case
where, if successful, SCO could launch claims on the Linux kernel. SCO
sued Novell after the IBM case was in progress. Novell executives
claimed they owned the copyrights and actually waived them. But, in the
Novell case, SCO added a slander charge. Judge Kimball's order
effectively nullifies SCO's slander charge.

While it is anyone's guess what SCO will do next, I'm sure that the
Sept 11th trial will be on the short side, and I'm sure that IBM will
file a motion for a summary judgment to dismiss in their case as will
Red Hat. The Red Hat case has been on hold pending the outcomes of the
other 2. 

Additionally, since one of the counter claims by Novell in this case is
some license fees owed to it by SCO, this case could possibly place SCO
into bankruptcy. I suspect that SCO will have a rescuer since the Unix
license authority that SCO holds are important to major players, such
as IBM, Sun, HP, SGI, Microsoft and other commercial Unix vendors.
(Microsoft is a licensee because of its Microsoft Services for UNIX).

The bottom line here is that we won't have to pay SCO to use Linux :-)

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

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