The conflict between SCO and Novell started in 2003 due to a misunderstanding of UNIX ownership. For one side, SCO Group claimed being the only owners of UNIX, for the other side we have Novell arguing that they never sold the copyrights to SCO’s antecessor (Santa Cruz Operations). The problem was taken to jury, and in 2004, SCO filed a Slander of Title lawsuit against Novell. After almost 7 years of fighting on trials, SCO never could prove that UNIX belongs to them, so on March 30, 2010, the final verdict was released; the court ruled that Novell owns the copyright of UNIX and they were awarded with $2.5 million.
This was a very important resolution, since SCO were planning to charge to all Linux users for a license fee, due to, according to them (SCO) Linux Kernel was made based on UNIX, so they thought they could make money out of it. Fortunately the jury ruled in favor of Novell, that was great news for all the Open Source community.
Yes, that was lucky that SCO lost this lawsuit in the end. Too bad it took about 7 years for all this to get settled. I wonder how common that is for this type of lawsuit. It does make you wonder though, what if SCO had won, eh? On a completely different and unrelated note: Did you change the look of your Linux blog? It looks different to me for some reason.
ReplyDeleteThat's oi oi o-o. It would have been tragic if SCO had succeeded in stealing Linux from Novell.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty sad that the lawsuit took 7 years... but then again I suppose that the lawsuit took that long with investigations as to proof of Novell selling their copyright of Linux to SCO, which apparently never happened in the first place =). I think that SCO should have been required to pay for all of Novell's charges for court + the 2.5 million for putting them through all of that hassle ; O.