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Novell Quotes AT&T on Derivative Works

Posted by timothy on from the ma-bell-swings-her-hammer-of-truth dept.

grendelkhan writes "Novell has released their latest correspondance with the litigous bastards ordering them to stop the lawsuit by noon tomorrow, and clarify what the SVRX licensing agreements with AT&T meant regarding derivative works. The letter quotes AT&T from the April '85 issue of $echo as stating that they 'claim no ownership interest in any portion of such a modification or derivative work.' So much for the ladder rung analogy." And reader highwaytohell links to today's CRN article in which Eben Moglen suggests that the SCO/Linux lawsuit cannot move ahead "until SCO resolves its dispute with Novell. And regardless of which company prevails in court, he said, customers won't have to pay any company for a license fee since both claimants--SCO and Novell--have distributed the Linux code under the GPL. Once again, SCO have no comment."

4 of 354 comments (clear)

  1. litigous bastards? by MooKore+2004 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I know that everyone and their dog here at Slashdot hates SCO, but is it really necesscary to call them names? It just makes us look like Mad Zealots. Youd think after the what the BBC published you would try and take this case more calmly?

    --
    found here
  2. How soon we forget. by NanoGator · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Novell has released their latest correspondance with the litigous bastards..."

    And some of you accused the BBC of making an unfounded claim when they said this:

    "If anyone's anger has no measure, it is the wrath of internet zealots who believe that code should be free to all (open source). So, it seems likely that the perpetrators of the MyDoom virus and its variants are internet vandals with a specific grudge."

    If you guys don't like having the finger pointed at you, then don't say things like that to attract attention to yourselves.

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    "Derp de derp."
    1. Re:How soon we forget. by roman_mir · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I disagree. Linux zealots or not, Sco are litigous bastards. BBC linking Linux users and coders to MyDoom trojan without looking at any other points of view, now that is some 'fair' news delivery.

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      You can't handle the truth.
  3. Re:Meanwhile, back on the western front... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the only copyrights SCO claims are to sysV unix (and some older unices that don't matter). They also have contractual rights to *derivative works* made from sysV. IBM's AIX is such a derivative work, and IBM cannot release it without SCO approval - for sure they can't turn AIX into GPL code.

    BUT, IBM has independently produced a lot of software that is part of AIX but is not sysV code. This material from NOVELL makes it even clearer (if anything can be clearer than perfectly transparent) that IBM owns this independently developed code and can do whatever it wants with it -- notably, they can contribute it to linux under the GPL. SCO is toast.