OSNews

Myself, I'm betting they [the copyrights] get sold to Microsoft -- now that the court's transferred the ownership of UNIX from SCO to Novell, it doesn't require any special insight to predict what they'll do with it.

You could almost suspect Microsoft planned it this way from the start.

Edited 2007-08-11 19:29 UTC

Doubtful; if Novell owns all the rights to UNIX, then Microsoft and Sun probably have the right to sue SCO selling something they first don't own, falsely claiming ownership of property, then if they sent any of the contracts by mail, those involved could be charged with mail fraud - in NZ referred to as 'fraudulently using a document'.

Microsoft would gain nothing out of purchasing SCO - if Sun and Microsoft do go to court to sue SCO, the settlement might include dividing up SCO's assets - given they own virtually nothing, nothing would be gained.

As for Novell and Microsoft purchasing them - I would say that Novell will either hold onto them or give them fully under an opensource licence - CDDL would be great; finally have one UNIX out there which would provide Solaris with OpenServer and UnixWare compatibility.

It would piss IBM off, make Sun happy - and they would easily win customers who are currently looking for a future direction for OpenServer/UnixWare products - many POS terminals out there currently use OpenServer backends. Yum Brands being one of the biggest.

Edited 2007-08-11 19:35

Might it not be more likely that MS now buys Novell? After all, buying the certified owner of Unix must be a good move?

We would not be celebrating then....!

Ummmm...how do you figure the court transferred ownership of Unix from SCO to Novell? The court ruling specifically states that Novell never transferred the Unix copyrights to SCO (or, more accurately, oldSCO), and they were never SCO's at any point in time. Novell has always owned them in other words.

Novell has already waived such claims against Linux.

The GPL says you can only distribute the code which is under the GPL if you undertake not to sue any "downstream" recipients of the code.

Novell's stake in Linux has no value to Microsoft for these reasons.

And now that Novell clearly owns the Unix copyrights, wouldn't it be great if they released them under the BSD or GPL and allow all of us to move on.

You can't "release" copyright ownership under a copyright license. That doesn't compute. Novell isn't the sole owner of the UNIX copyrights either, so they don't have the authority to relicense the covered works. The SVR4 codebase is proprietary and will remain proprietary.

All that really matters in this case is that as a copyright owner, Novell has a say in prosecuting alleged copyright infringement involving UNIX. In this case, Novell is expected to instruct the courts to dismiss SCO's case against IBM. It's their right to decide who gets sued for infringing their own copyrights.

The implications are mixed for the Linux community. On the one hand, Novell has the power to dismiss any claims that Linux violates UNIX copyrights. On the other hand, Novell could conceivably use this power prejudiciously against competing Linux distributors.

I've previously argued that Microsoft's covenant not to sue Novell's customers is actually a disincentive for them to sue other Linux users. The risk of losing jeopardizes the existing agreements. But the deal gives Novell undeniable leverage over other vendors.

Once again, Novell has used a legal maneuver in an attempt to protect Linux users. And once again, it gives them an advantage over competing Linux vendors. This time, though, I believe the good outweighs the bad.

My wording might have been poor, but if you are the sole owner of a copyrighted work, you can certainly release said work under any license of your liking, GPL or BSD included.

On the other hand, Novell could conceivably use this power prejudiciously against competing Linux distributors.


not novell, but SUN might, if it buys novell.

Edited 2007-08-11 20:51

"On the other hand, Novell could conceivably use this power prejudiciously against competing Linux distributors."

These thoughts sprung to my mind as well. Will Novell start asking for Unix royalties from Red Hat et al? A few years ago at the start of the SCO case, I would have never imagined such a scenario; now, I'm not so sure.

I would hope that Novell would declare that they plan to use their copyright ownership to benefit all open-source distributors, sort of like what Sun did with its patent covenants. Unfortunately, I can also imagine them having a very different mindset....

Novell would have even more hurdles to clear than SCO. After telling the world that Linux is safe from UNIX infringement claims, if they turn around and pull the same stunt SCO did, a Judge would most likely not hesitate to issue Rule 11 sanctions against Novell and their legal team.

Novell has released any offending Unix code in Linux that they own under the GPL, plain and simple. Just like SCO will innevitably be told, Novell can't turn around and change their mind years later and expect people to pay them money for something they authorized.

Novell isn't the sole owner of the UNIX copyrights either, so they don't have the authority to relicense the covered works.

Who else owns them then? I was under the impression that SCO's requests for licensing fees were based on the idea that they were the sole owners of at least some quantity of code, hence this ruling would suggest that Novell are the actual sole owners. Which would give them the right to relicense that code. Or am I missing something? (perhaps something about derived works etc etc?)

This doesn't actually follow.

Linux isn't a copy of Unix. Linux doesn't infringe UNIX copyrights.

SCO's case against IBM boiled down the the claim that IBM's license to use UNIX source code included a requirement for IBM to keep "UNIX methods and concepts" as a trade secret.

Novell has already waived that claim against IBM. SCO objected to Novell's waiver.

Now it turns out that Novell's waiver stands.

Linux is already vindicated.

I think that is too much to say that justice has been served. Novell was the owner, they purchased the code when started UNIXWARE business, and it was confirmed in court.

SCO was going down the drain anyway, and it is going to be over soon. Nothing much changed for them.

SCO management, on the contrary, made plenty of money out of it. Their stock was very low before the lawsuit, and increased, maybe, hundredfold after it. I remember the article that reported of stock sold by Stowell, Sontag and McBride. There is no justice served here.

Linux vendors lost, because some customers were in doubt and declined from Linux. SCO will go bankrupt and probably never going to pay for the damage. Again, no justice served.

This also means that Novell is less dependent on GNU than some people think. If they need to, they could, with some effort, replace "GNU tools" with traditional UNIX tools (grep, awk, etc.) which they legally own now.

They wont do that. They can use code from them to make the GNU tools better but if they fork too far they will give Red Hat and Oracle the upper hand because they will be way incompatible. Remember RedHat is #1 and most developers develop for Red Hat first and then make versions for other versions of Linux later.

If it's too hard to make their software work on Suse then they are just going to drop or ignore Suse or everyone will have to compile from source. That means they will just buy Red Hat or at the least buy Oracle.

Novell's business (Which is not that big anyway) will crumble.

I don't think Novell will do anything. At worst they will try to promote that that have the MS deal and they own the copyrights to Unix which makes them the real Unix / Linux vendor and that they are the best choice because of that.

The problem with this thinking is that now it is more desirable to be "Linux interoperable" and "run on Linux" than it is to be "UNIX interoperable" and "run on UNIX".