Attachmate To Retain Novell Unix Copyrights

angry tapir writes "Novell's copyrights for the Unix operating system will remain under Attachmate's control as part of the companies' pending merger, a Novell spokesman has revealed. The confirmation, which came in a terse message posted to Novell's website, seems to rule out questions of whether Unix assets are part of some 882 patents being sold to a Microsoft-led consortium, CPTN Holdings, as part of the deal."

Comments

We gotta buy them.

[unity100]

As the internet developer/it communities. and even corporations. its better off outside microsoft's reach, in ANY case, even if a claim cannot be laid.

why cant we set up a consortium to buy it and release it as open source ? and donate to that consortium ?

"whether Unix assets are part of some 882 patents"

[John Hasler]

There are no Unix patents.

why should BSD care?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who uses Linux, BSD, OS X, or any other Unix or Unix-like OS* should care, since the SCO insanity showed that there are numerous bottom-feeders out there who will try to use "owenership of Unix" -- whether or not they actually own it -- as a weapon. It doesn't matter if there's any infringing IP to go after, either; they'll still cause loads of trouble. I have no idea what Attachmate's business practices are like, but Microsoft being able to claim any kind of Unix ownership would be a guaranteed disaster.

*Which, of course, means anyone who uses the internet, even if they don't know it.

Why exactly should the BSDs care? They were cleared by the original lawsuit many years ago, and every line of code can be accounted for since as they've been using a version control system every since so that it wouldn't happen again (which is what got Linux in trouble in the first place because a lot of things could not be tracked back to its origins). Logically (which is sadly not the way the world works) if there's a dispute in the BSD code an CVS / SVN "annotate" command can trace it back and things can be cleared up.

Apple's Mac OS X should be similarly clear to a large extent as well, as they've used FreeBSD (as have Isilon, Cisco, etc.).

Solaris should be okay because Sun (when it existed) would get licenses for all of these things to be on the safe / paranoid side. It's why they indemnified their customers, as they were fairly sure they had everything they needed (in so far as even getting a license from Xerox PARC for the GUI AFAIK). I would bet that similar things could be said about AIX and HP-UX, but I don't have as much experience with those.

Properly run organizations can deal with any such Unix IP claim with little to know effort (though it's still a hassle). AFAICT, Linux is the main Unix-y system that has a problem because of a lack of organization, especially on the documentation side of things during its early development.

(This is for copyright and trademark claims of course. Patents are a whole other kettle of fish.)

Too late, it is already taken care of

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue of copyrights and unix has been taken care of already. Both SCO and Novel released the linux kernel and other parts of the operating system under the GPL. Any claims for copyright infringement are rendered moot. Once those codes were released under the GPL by the "owners" of the copyright then the game is over. Thank you Novel for buying and releasing SUSE under the GPL. (Never thought that I would be glad about anything done by SUSE but there you go....)

Re:Too late, it is already taken care of

[marcosdumay]

The patents that apply to current versions of Linux (or any software distributed with SUSE) can't be used in a court case against this software. If it applies to a GPLed software it also can't be used against any derivative software.

Now, Microsoft had lost a case against Novell based on a few patents that weren't disclosed*. I bet this move is mainly** protective, as MS would not like those patents to get into the hands of anybody else.

* That was what caused that cross licensing when Microsoft started spreading that SUSE had licenses to use their patents. It looks like MS lost a case, and signed a cross licensing deal while paying Novell to use its patents. Of course, the details are secret, but the money flow is not.

** It is probably being made with the intention of being protective. But in the future, MS may find itself with some patents it can use...

The Missing Link

[rec9140]

Here is the MISSING LINK:

http://www.novell.com/company/ir/message.html

And this is still NOT GOOD.

Regardless of whether these are valid or not, and regardless of whether there even should be IP, trademark, or copyright... at this point in time this BS still exists and "The Unix Patents" that novell own[s|ed] need to be in the hands of FRIENDLY *NIX entities and most definitely NOT MS, EVER, PERIOD!

Turn them over to the EFF, OSF, or Linus himself, but this needs to be put to bed to kill off any more SCO Zombies in the future.

There are also needs to be disclosure on exactly what it is ms is getting.

Pretty obvious this is a way to kill off the WordPerfect litigation. But what else?

Oh... and Attachmate you STILL BLEW IT! Send monoboi packing! ! ! ! ! We don't want him or his disease! He desperately wants to work for ms, so grant his wish already.

So SUSE is still embargo'd and can't be used. Sad, really sad, for a once great distro.

*Patents*, not copyrights

[Anonymous Coward]

The GP:v3 focused on patent protections for a reason. Microsoft has been saber rattling about patents and Linux for years now. (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x36tn1_steve-ballmer-threatens-redhat-with_news). Novell actually *owned* significant patents in networking technologies. SCO had no case, and dragged it on successfully for most of a decade. Microsoft could, theoretically, abuse Novell patents even without them actually being valid or applying to threaten Linux in similar fashion.

Whether they'll do so has little to do with the actual validity of the patent, but rather on the other business results of such an attempt.