SCO to sue Linux user Tuesday

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Corrections

"SCO, which owns a disputed amount of Unix intellectual property"

Novell transferred the UNIX trademark and Single UNIX Specification to X/Open (now The Open Group) in 1993, well before any transfer of IP to SCO. SCO doesn't owned UNIX, the article should be talking about System V code.

"SCO is seeking to charge companies $699 per single-processor server to use Linux, which is closely related to Unix"

SCO claims some code in Linux is copied from or derived from System V. This claim has not been proven, therefore is unfair to say Linux is closely related, or indeed at all related to UNIX. Linus argues (with evidence) that it was developed independently.

"SCO began arguing in March 2003 that IBM illegally moved Unix technology to Linux"

SCO made a trade secrets claim against IBM in March 2003, a claim they have now dropped. SCO has amended its claim to copyright infringements. Damages are requested for continuing to ship System V code without a licence (which was revoked by SCO) and a derived works claim over code IBM wrote.

Both claims are dubious given:

i) IBM's licence was revoked because of the trade secrets claim, which was latter dropped.

ii) Novell asserts they own the System V copyrights not SCO.

iii) Novell asserts they continue to have the right to refuse changes to System V licencees (eg revocation), which they dod for IBM.

iv) AT&T significantly narrowed the definition of derived works in its licence to not include original works (eg JFS).

Of course the new case is unlikely to be anything like the case against IBM, rather it'll be arguing over the origins of files like signals.h

Posted by: Richard Flude   Posted on: 03/01/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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