joegratz.net

So, now it appears that SCO doesn’t own the UNIX intellectual property after all. I’d thought they’d bought it from Novell, but this press release from Novell indicates that Novell still owns all of it, and that while SCO has rights to sublicense the code, it has no standing to bring a copyright or patent infringement claim against anyone. This seemingly hastily written response from SCO tips their hand a bit and weakens some of their FUD. All they’re able to do is take action against those in privity of contract with SCO, not Linux vendors or Linux customers in general. If everything SCO claims is true, which is doubtful, only IBM and other holders of UNIX-vendor licenses from SCO appear to be in danger of legal action. Everyone else — me, you, the Debian project, Red Hat — is in the clear.

I had sort of wondered, if their case was so strong, why they were proceeding on breach of contract and trade secret grounds instead of patents and copyrights. This takes care of that nicely; they don’t have any exclusive copyright or patent rights in UNIX at all.