Novell puts Linux community fears to rest

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Novell has dismissed suggestions it may use the major ruling it won last week over SCO in the ongoing copyright battle to pursue damages.

Last Friday's ruling in the US courts found Novell was the rightful owner of the copyrights to Unix and the Unixware brand, dismissing SCO's claims of slander and breach of contract.

Further to the statement Novell issued at the time, spokesman Bruce Lowry said: We're not interested in suing people over Linux; we're not even in the Unix business any more."

He also said the ruling and Novell's commitment not to sue existing Unix vendors had "lifted the cloud over Linux" created by SCO's legal actions against Novell, although he declined to speculate on the other, ongoing claims the case involves with Novell or the legal battle SCO is simultaneously pursuing with IBM.

Pamela Jones, founder and editor of open source legal website, Groklaw, said: "SCO couldn't find any infringement even when it had access to the entire copyrighted code base. No one else will find anything either."

She also said that the Linux community would now be looking to the ongoing wranglings over the Linux General Public Licence (GPL) raised by Microsoft following the establishment of its interoperability agreement with Novell last year.

The long-running case began in 2003 when SCO filed suit against IBM for Unix copyright infringement in using the code in its contributions to Linux. It then sued Novell a year later, saying Novell had falsely claimed rights to Unix.

The US judge presiding over the SCO/Novell case has asked all parties involved to file documents outlining all the outstanding issues pertaining to the case by 31 August.

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