Monday, 13 August 2007

Court Rules SCO Doesn’t Own Unix

A court in Utah has said that SCO Group does not own the Unix software that has gone into making Linux, the world’s top free and open source software...

A court in Utah has said that SCO Group does not own the Unix software that has gone into making Linux, the world’s top free and open source software.

The SCO had spent about four and a half years claiming it owns the copyrights to Unix, and that the Linux operating system includes codes stolen from Unix.

However SCO said it is not going to keep quite and it will carry on with other claims against Novell and might even try to appeal against the ruling.

Linux programmers from around the world claimed since beginning that SCO’s claims were bogus and lacked any merit.

SCO’s case against Linux backers started in early 2003 when the Lindon, Utah absed firm sued IBM claiming thet the Armonk, New York based firm took code from Unix and put it into Linux. SCO also warned hundreds of customers that they might be in legal trouble for using Linux.

However Novell came to IBM’s rescue saying that Novell, not SCO, actually owned the Unix copyrights. Novell had licensed Unix to SCO’s predecessor company, and SCO argued that in this transaction it had picked up the copyrights to Unix. Novell, however, claimed it had retained copyrights to Unix code.

In a statement, SCO said it was “obviously disappointed with the ruling,” but also indicated it intends to carry on with its lawsuit against Novell. “Although the district judge ruled in Novell's favor on important issues, the case has not yet been fully vetted by the legal system and we will continue to explore our options with respect to how we move forward from here.”