SCO may raise 'Linux' license fees

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It was assertained...

in documents produced by Novell that Caldera was paying royalties up until they became SCO Group then ceased payments. Novell also produced letters sent to SCO Group asking them to continue the payments at which time SCO Group claimed they were not using the Novell IP in any current shipping product. That is, they were not developing Unixware nor Open Server.

History:
Caldera bought The Santa Cruz Operation, Unixware and Open Server along with all the Unix code and IP rights that they had at that time. Caldera stopped developing Unixware and Open Server to concentrate on Linux and services During this time, Caldera Linux was still being developed and distributed under the GPL with Caldera technology being added to the Caldera distro.

Caldera then sold its appication development division to past Caldera fouonders and became the SCO Group to concentrate on its core technologies. At this time they stopped paying Novell royalties. Novell sent letters asking for payments.

It was not until just prior to SCO Group filing suit against IBM that they turned around and sent a letter to Novell demanding them to produce the documents of transfer of IP rights to them according to the sales agreement.

Novell, now with new leadership and direction since the sale of System V to The Santa Cruz Operation, sent a memo to SCO Group apologising for the inconvenience and said they will act on their request quickly. After examining the documents, Novell then sent another memo to SCO Group saying that the IP rights were never a part of the agreement and they would like SCO Group to continue paying royalties.

SCO then announced their lawsuits against IBM et al. This is what took Novell by surprise because 1) Novell holds that the sales agreement did not include those particular IP rights, 2) if SCO G thought the agreement did include those rights then why was Caldera making royalty payments and 3) the fact that SCO Group has no proof of the actual transfer *yet* having only recently demanded it, means that they cannot file a suit against IBM or anyone else *yet*!

Novell took their dear sweet time in releasing a statement along with the supporting docs because they wanted their lawyers to look over everything first, a lesson that SCO G needs to follow.

Posted by: The King's Servant   Posted on: 08/12/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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