"Judge Dale Kimball has issued a 102-page ruling on the numerous summary judgment motions in SCO v. Novell. Here is what matters most: [T]he court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights. The court also ruled that "SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver of SCO's claims against IBM and Sequent". There are a couple of loose ends, but the big picture is, SCO lost. Oh, and it owes Novell a lot of money from the Microsoft and Sun licenses", GrokLaw writes.
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Member since:2005-07-06
You could almost suspect Microsoft planned it this way from the start.
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
Member since:2005-08-26
Member since:2007-05-04
Considering that Microsoft and Sun would already have to line up behind Novell, IBM and Red Hat, it wouldn't be worth the legal fees. After Novell is completely finished with SCO, which should be after the remaining issues are tried next month, the IBM trial will immediately proceed. After the court rules that IBM hasn't infringed SCO's copyrights, Red Hat will likely ask the judge overseeing their case against SCO to lift the stay and allow it to proceed.
And with this court ruling, SCO's sales are going to be affected because while it was clear that SCO was unstable, with this ruling they are essentially insolvent. Novell has been granted judgment on the fact that SCO owes them large amounts of money....the only question remaining for trial being how much.
Member since:2005-07-06
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
...which is one of the reasons Novell probably won't open-source it. IBM is one of their biggest customers, and they don't want to help Sun out any more than they can help it.
Member since:2005-10-12
Member since:2007-01-18
IBM is going to buy Novell. Well, at least that's the way it looks if you look at their recent history of liquidating assets and putting a bunch of IBM execs on the board.
Watching the way they are starting to license things to small business I'd say IBM is exerting a great amount of influence over Novell at the moment.
Member since:2007-05-04
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.
Member since:2007-02-17
You could almost suspect Microsoft planned it this way from the start.
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.
Member since:
2007-02-22
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