SCO's estranged relationship with Linux

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One of the many ironies in this story is that SCO's version of Unix had been derived from Xenix, which had been developed by Microsoft, in partnership with the old SCO, during a brief flirtation with Unix back in the eighties. Some have said that Xenix was the best operating system that Microsoft ever produced.

The plot thickens

Almost immediately after SCO announced its case against IBM there was an unexpected and impassioned intervention from Novell's (then) chief executive, Jack Messman. Novell, having ditched the Caldera Linux operation in 1994, had suddenly became a Linux friendly company again. Messman, in the words of Novell's press release, "challenged SCO's assertion that it owns the copyrights and patents to Unix System V, pointing out that the asset purchase agreement entered into between Novell and SCO in 1995 did not transfer these rights to SCO", and demanded that SCO produce "facts to back up its assertion that certain UNIX System V code has been copied into Linux." Within months Novell was reborn as a Linux company, assisted in its purchase of SuSE to the tune of $50 million (£25 million) by IBM.

Subsequently, Novell has played a major part in the legal actions between SCO and IBM, in support of IBM's case, and as a key distributor of Linux, but the 2006 patent and licensing agreement between Novell and Microsoft, which followed Messman's replacement as chief executive of Novell has obscured much of this, and has further clouded the issues.

The judge has declared that the monies paid to the SCO Group for the purchase of Unix licenses by Microsoft and Sun are now owed to Novell. The SCO group is in deep trouble but, against all the odds, claims to be fighting on.

Sun meanwhile, may have a problem with OpenSolaris, as the intellectual property rights it purchased from SCO belong to Novell, which in the shape of Linux, is in direct competition with Sun. Both Microsoft and Sun Microsystems have given succour and financial support to SCO in the apparent hope of making mischief, discrediting Linux and slowing the inevitable progress of free and open source software. Sun paid SCO $10 million (£5 million) and Microsoft $16.75 million (£8.37 million).

The case never had much merit, and has been interesting mostly for SCO's persistence in coming back for more, as Pamela Jones of Groklaw put it, like the Black Knight in the Monty Python film, "It's only a flesh wound", or as Judge Brooke Wells put it, "SCO's arguments are akin to SCO telling IBM, 'Sorry, we are not going to tell you what you did wrong because you already know.'"

The Linux companies involved in this case, IBM, Novell and Red Hat, would be justified in ensuring the case ends with a complete exoneration of the Linux kernel developers who, quite rightly, have never given the case any more attention than it deserves. SCO's "luxury car" has been driven into a wall, and the episode may serve as a lesson that basing your business on intellectual property threats and litigation probably is not wise.

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