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DannyB [soylentnews.org] writes:

Last of original SCO v IBM Linux lawsuit settled [zdnet.com]

While at the Linux Foundation Members Summit [linuxfoundation.org] in Napa, California, I was bemused to find that an open-source savvy intellectual property attorney had never heard of SCO vs. IBM. [practical-tech.com] You know, the lawsuit that at one time threatened to end Linux in the cradle? Well, at least some people thought so anyway. More fool they. But now, after SCO went bankrupt; [zdnet.com] court after court dismissing SCO's crazy copyright claims; [practical-tech.com] and closing in on 20-years into the saga, the U.S. District Court of Utah [uscourts.gov] has finally put a period to the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit.

I learned of this yesterday on a forum I visit every day that still follows this. It only took 18 and 1/2 years for the case, and 14 years of SCO in bankruptcy.

But . . .

So is this it? Is it finally all over and only people who lived through the battle will remember it? I wish.

Xinuos, [xinuos.com] which bought SCO's Unix products and intellectual property [sltrib.com] (IP) in 2011, sued IBM and Red Hat for "illegally Copying Xinuos' software code for its server operating systems" [prnewswire.com] on March 31, 2021.

How? Xinuos bought SCO Unix operating systems in 2011. These operating systems, OpenServer and Unixware, still have a few customers. When Xinuos made the deal, its CEO, Richard A. Bolandz, promised that the company "has no intention to pursue any litigation related to the SCO Group assets acquired by the company. We are all about world leadership in technology, not litigation."

That didn't last.

I will point out a few things from this almost two decade saga:

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

• Novell owned the copyrights to UNIX.
• SCO sold a Unix product and kept 5% of revenue and sent 95% to Novell.
• Novell, as copyright owner, said SCO has no standing to sue IBM.
• SCO immediately claimed copyright ownership of Unix, and stopped paying Novell all sales royalties.
• SCO began making incredible wild claims. SCO wants their day in court, yet they stalled and stalled at every opportunity. The press believed it. These open source people must have stolen something, SCO is a commercial company.
• SCO claimed that every user of Linux, for any purpose whatsoever, even home user who compile from source, owe SCO $1399 per CPU, but because SCO are such nice guys, the introductory price is $699 per CPU. Remember this is in 2003 and created huge fear and doubt about any future commercial viability of Linux.
• SCO's claim to own Unix copyrights eventually spun out a separate lawsuit over ownership of Unix copyrights which was found in Novell's favor. This alone, removes SCO's standing to sue IBM over copyright infringement, so SCO morphed its case into a contract dispute over a joint project Monterey with IBM that wasn't as successful as Linux.
• The fact that IBM had also invested in Linux must mean that IBM had some nefarious intent not to fulfill its contractual obligations to SCO on this project.
• On the SCO vs IBM lawsuit, due to SCO's stalling, despite that they are anxious to get their day in court, the court had to order SCO three times to produce some actual evidence, any evidence of their allegations. Finally on the third court order, the court set a deadline of Dec 22, 2005 for SCO to produce some evidence.
• SCO produced a stack of handwaving. The magistrate judge threw out 2/3 of that on its face. The remaining 1/3 was technically plausible enough to actually be somewhat questionable, an therefore couldn't be thrown out. The judge's comments were telling.
• The court started making rulings unfavorable to SCO based on the "evidence", and set a trial date.
• On Friday afternoon before the Sept 17, 2007 trial, SCO declared bankruptcy. The evening before this, while planning this, they ate pizza, and charged it on a credit card, knowing that the pizza shop would never be able to collect the debt.
• Normally a company does not stay in bankruptcy for long. It either reorganizes or gets liquidated. SCO managed to convince people that it had some kind of legitimate claim.

That summary is the tip of the iceberg. Many here are probably too young to remember all this.

The whole nonsense is documented at Groklaw [groklaw.net], until mid 2013 when PJ stopped blogging about this after more than a decade. This blog was so good and valuable that the Library of Congress added to its permanent archives for posterity.

Original Submission