Appeals Court Rules: SCO v. IBM Case Can Continue (arstechnica.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader Freshly Exhumed quotes Ars Technica: A federal appeals court has now partially ruled in favor of the SCO Group, breathing new life into a lawsuit and a company (now bankrupt and nearly dead) that has been suing IBM for nearly 15 years.

Last year, U.S. District Judge David Nuffer had ruled against SCO (whose original name was Santa Cruz Operation) in two summary judgment orders, and the court refused to allow SCO to amend its initial complaint against IBM. SCO soon appealed. On Monday, the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals found that SCO's claims of misappropriation could go forward while also upholding Judge Nuffer's other two orders.
Here's Slashdot's first story about the trial more than 14 years ago, and a nice timeline from 2012 of the next nine years of legal drama.

Comments

Appropriate link

[Chris Mattern]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Appropriate link

[Anonymous Coward]

What, no Rick-Roll?
I'm not sure if there was ever a more appropriate time to use it.

Re:Appropriate link

[Anonymous Coward]

Never gonna dig you up
Never gonna lift you out
Never gonna uncover your bones
And exhume you...

License Fee

[110010001000]

Good thing I paid my $699 License Fee to SCO. Who is laughing now???

Re:License Fee

[Billly Gates]

Did you also pay them $1400 for a TCP/IP stack? Gee I have no clue why SCO Unix faded away. No idea at all how Linux possibly could have taken over with pricing strategies like that.

Re:License Fee

[110010001000]

I live in Seattle so I can only get dialup, so no TCP/IP. Just BBS.

Re:License Fee

[Aighearach]

Time for a fidonet <-> owncloud gateway! The future is here at last!!!!1!

Re:License Fee

[mikael]

Is that PPP or are you still using SLIP?

Re:License Fee

[stasike]

Gee I have no clue why SCO Unix faded away.

This is different SCO - SCO Group.
This SCO Group was originally called Caldera. Caldera purchased *some* intellectual property for SCO Unix from the original Santa Cruz Operation. Santa Cruz Operation then renamed itself to Tarantela and the new SCO proceeded with their racketeering scam against IBM and Linux users in general.

Re:License Fee

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Who is laughing now???

Steve Ballmer is laughing now . . . he totally skanked you!

Ok, I actually need to recuse myself here, because I was required to give a deposition for the case . . . along with a buttload of other harmless developers.

I did development work for IBM's AIX kernel, and then worked for their Linux Technology Center. Just about everyone who was tainted with that experience got nailed.

The deposition was ok . . . the lawyer was on Park Avenue in New York, and I live in Europe, so it was just a pleasant phone call. We tend to rant on about lawyers here in Slashdot, but I was quite positively surprised to talk to the lawyer. He wasn't an IBM employee, but worked for a law office that handled a lot of the "grunt work" for IBM. The lawyer told me ominously that the case would drag out . . . and that someone with a lot of money was sponsoring SCO . . . and that some unnamed executive from SCO got a hefty deposit in a bank account on the Cayman Islands.

Re: License Fee

[1s44c]

PPP or SLIP can tunnel IP over a serial connection. TCP/IP became the dominant protocol because it could run over anything.

Re:License Fee

[Anonymous Coward]

i have an actual retail box of caldera openlinux... so these fucktards can go suck each other off.

Re: License Fee

[Anonymous Coward]

How are they paying for this lawsuit if they proceed?

Re: License Fee

[Anonymous Coward]

Errrrrr.... Yeah. You _can_ make it run over everything. Should you is a different question.

Re:License Fee

[nukenerd]

The lawyer told me ominously ... that someone with a lot of money was sponsoring SCO . .

I wonder who that could be.

Re:License Fee

[Anonymous Coward]

The lawyers, obviously. Sure seems like the only justification to allow this to continue is so that Big Law can line their pockets with both the defendant's and the plaintiff's money.

In any other line of business, racketeering punishments would have been meted out long ago.

Re: License Fee

[Anonymous Coward]

PPP and SLIP were the primary mechanism for dialup access to ISP points of presence back in the very early 90s. PPP is still widely used for point to point connections. SLIP died a death and was superseded by PPP, although I can't remember the technical reasons for the shift.

Re:License Fee

[Anonymous Coward]

You are mildly confused, but it's OK. The original Santa Cruz Operation group sold a variant of Xenix, System,Vr3, and Unixware (SysVr4). They were a semi-asshole company, but playing along with the "high licensing cost of UNIX" game and offering a reasonable product for the price.

1992, enter viable offerings from both Linux and FreeBSD. iBCS emulation. Free TCP/IP stacks. Ick. Offering a product for thousands that competes with $0... Hmm. Plug away, free licensing for developer use, broken business model through Y2K when a Linux variant most notable for allowing you to play Tetris during the installation appears and offers you millions for the rights you've managed to acquire carefully over the years. Sure thing, boss!

Watch them piss it and your name away. Old-school SCO wasn't bad, just in the buggy-whip business in the era of cars. Caldera, there's a bunch of buttheads.

Re:License Fee

[Anonymous Coward]

The lawyer told me ominously ... that someone with a lot of money was sponsoring SCO . .

I wonder who that could be.

M$

Re:License Fee

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it this guy? https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=222304&cid=18008048

Re:License Fee

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama

What The F---??

[laurencetux]

please tell me this is just the legal system grinding out the last little bits of this farce??

message to the 4 interns and junior lawyer that SCO has

You are Going Against THE NAZGUL bail now and you might be able to continue in the legal field someday.

You ain't Hobbits and you do not have the ONE RING

Re: What The F---??

[Anonymous Coward]

please tell me this is just the legal system grinding out the last little bits of this farce??
message to the 4 interns and junior lawyer that SCO has
You are Going Against THE NAZGUL bail now and you might be able to continue in the legal field someday.
You ain't Hobbits and you do not have the ONE RING

This is the legal system doing its job.

Sure beats the hell out of Russia or China.

Maybe, laurencetux, you could tell us which bits of you rulings you don't understand and we can try to help you?

Re:What The F---??

[Aighearach]

This is just the legal system grinding out the last little bits of this farce. The courts really don't care how stupid the case is, all the little technical bits still have to get handled the same.

The reason it is still around is that IBM isn't willing to just walk away and let it go, they want to burn the case completely to the ground as a warning to others who would sue them. So as long as SCO isn't willing to walk away the clear loser, they can drag it out like this. Both sides have lots of money, so the Court doesn't really care if they want to hash out the correct answer to each legal argument that was made in the case. Neither side is crying about the process.

Re: What The F---??

[mangastudent]

SCO provided a list of source code files in the Linux kernel that infringe SCO's copyrights.

What copyrights? As the article indicated, it was discovered at the end that SCO never owned the copyright to UNIX, they'd just bought for about 5% the value of that the right to administrate the licencing of it. And they demonstrated they knew this just before starting SCO v. The World by trying to get the rights from Novell.

Re: What The F---??

[Anonymous Coward]

Justice shouldn't be based on the skill of the lawyers but the validity of the claims made by the plaintiffs. SCO provided a list of source code files in the Linux kernel that infringe SCO's copyrights. The continued presence of infringing code in the Linux kernel is justification enough for the case to continue. Even if IBM has managed to bankrupt SCO by using legal tactics to stall, the fact remains that there is infringing code. If there is justice, SCO will eventually prevail.

I'm sorry, but you must be mistaking the US legal system for one that somehow doesn't require you to fund a legal battle.

He who dies, is usually the bankrupt one. If there is justice, it's not to be found in the US legal system.

Re: What The F---??

[Kobun]

Links, please.

Re: What The F---??

[Anonymous Coward]

> SCOIBM provided a list of source code files in the Linux kernel that infringe SCO's copyrights. The continued presence of infringing code in the Linux kernel is justification enough for the case to continue.

No. You are wrong. First you were wrong with 'SCO provided ...' when you obviously meant 'IBM provided ...'. Then you were wrong with 'SCO's copyrights'. It isn't 'SCO' that is the plaintif, it is 'TSG' - The SCO Group, in fact even TSG is out of having sold the litigation rights to someone else. TSG bought the business of collecting Novell's licence fees from SCO. SCO had not bought the copyrights from Novell and thus TSG did not have any copyrights to Unix form Novell/Unix Labs.

One claim is that IBM put code from AIX for Itanic developed in Project Monterey into Linux. This is untrue. The same specification was used to develop similar software with completely different code for OS/2 on x86. It was this code that was put into Linux.

Re:What The F---??

[Anonymous Coward]

> Both sides have lots of money

No. IBM has money. TSG (or who they sold the litigation rights to) has none*. BSF has an obligation, they have a contract with TSG and its successors to continue the case to the bitter end in the hope of getting a percentage of the win.

* TSG gave BSF 30million to continue the case indefinitely. They did this to stop Novell collecting anything from their win in court. TSG's business that they bought from SCO was to collect licence fees and pass them to Novell who would pay back 5%. TSG kept the lot. Novell sued and won. TSG had no money left after giving it all to BSF.

Re: What The F---??

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand either.
Nobody does, or else the case would have been settled years ago.

Re:What The F---??

[tinkerghost]

Um, SCO is in bankruptcy and has been for at least 3 years. As of the last filing with the bankruptcy court, they don't have enough money left to pay their bankruptcy lawyers let alone their creditors or for any filings on this case - or to appeal the case where they already owe Novell for slander of title.

Re: What The F---??

[sjames]

You missed the part where it turned out that SCO didn't actually own any of the source that went into the Linux kernel. Also the part where evidence suggests they knew that but figured they could grab a few million off of IBM.

Now, they're claiming IBM distributed code as part of AIX that they were only permitted under a technicality. They wish for the court to find that the technicality was too thin.

Re:What The F---??

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nice to see, after all these years, that people still don't care about reporting the story correctly.

Last year, U.S. District Judge David Nuffer had ruled against SCO (whose original name was Santa Cruz Operation)

No. The "SCO" in this lawsuit is The SCO Group whose original name was Caldera.

The original SCO -- The Santa Cruz Operation --- sold their UNIX business to Caldera and then changed their name to Taligent.

A couple of years later, just before filing this lawsuit, Caldera changed their name to The SCO Group for the specific purpose of creating confusion and making people think that they are the original SCO.

Re: What The F---??

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this case should have been disposed of as frivolous and malicious lawsuit many, many years ago.

At this point, everything that deserved any kind of hearing at all, along with far, far more that didn't and deserved immediate dismissal, has long ago been heard.

It's long past time that this case should have been put to bed and the attorneys involved in filing it sanctioned. This case should have seen many of SCO's attorneys permanently disbarred.

Re: What The F---??

[HornWumpus]

SCO's attorneys took the case, to the bitter end, for a chunk of now worthless SCO stock.

This is the Nazgul playing with those lawyers, like a cat playing with a 3/4 dead mouse. But every whack is that law firm bleeding 20+ shyster-hours (plus countless admin/paralegal hours).

I bet it's fun.

Re: What The F---??

[Anonymous Coward]

The United States doesn't have a justice system, we have a legal system. And justice will not prevail in this case, because Darl McBride, Steve Ballmer et al are still free men instead of spending the rest of their miserable worthless lives in prison as they so richly deserve.

Re:What The F---??

[HornWumpus]

SCO's lawyers took the case, to the bitter end, for a chunk of SCO stock. The Nazgul are now slowly, publicly 'eating those lawyers livers', as a warning.

They won't stop until they put that firm's partners into personal bankruptcy, and the shouldn't.

Re: What The F---??

[thegarbz]

SCO provided a list of source code files in the Linux kernel that infringe SCO's copyrights.

And got so incredibly slapped down that the company went insta-bankrupt. That's why this case here is called an "appeal". Until the appeals court rules otherwise, none of the code presented by SCO is considered infringing.

Re: What The F---??

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever noticed that Steve Ballmer and Harvey Weinstein never appear in the same room together? Conincidence? Or are they really the same person? Figure it out, Sherlock. Same MO. Same haircut. Same gut. Same perversions. They are the same, the very same.

Re:What The F---??

[Desler]

The Nazgul must not be that formidable or scary since SCO has kept the suit going on for more than a decade with no end in sight.

Re: What The F---??

[fibonacci8]

http://www.groklaw.net/ There you go

Re:What The F---??

[Aighearach]

If they didn't have money to pay, and were already bankrupt, they'd have dropped the case.

The reality is that if you're already bankrupt, and the lawyers are still working, it doesn't even matter if they fill out invoices because they'll be behind all the other creditors.

It isn't SCO that needs to have lots of money in that case, but rather, the lawyers themselves need to have lots of money if they want to keep chasing the case.

The reality is that the people behind the scenes who own SCO, and the lawyers, are not significantly different parties. And all the people making the decisions have plenty of money to keep making those same decisions.

Re:What The F---??

[Aighearach]

The firm can always walk away... if they can manage to let go of the Precious!

I just had to mix that in, so that I can hear the disturbance in the force when thousands of millennials cry out in horror and pain at once!

Re:What The F---??

[tinkerghost]

Their lawyers were prepaid through the end of the case (lump & contingency). SCO only has to pay for the filings and paperwork - not the actual legal work.

Re:What The F---??

[HornWumpus]

I don't think so. They 'took the case', they are contractually bound to defend it. Even after their client is bankrupt, the counterparty (IBM) can make them continue to bleed procedurally.

Re: What The F---??

[Anonymous Coward]

Very good point. The whole case was about SCO trying to claim parts of Linux was essentially theirs. But becasue Linux (at the time) had no money, they went after IBM, who had used some open source code in both AIX and Linix (with due attribution)

While the court threw a lifeline due to some technical issues that need to be resolved before the case can be completely dismissed, its interesting to see what people would do to monetize, for their benefit, open source code. Which now has become an 800lb gorilla in computing.

Re:What The F---??

[Aighearach]

You don't seem to have been paying attention to the details. Go and find out what they used to make the payment, then maybe you'll understand the current situation.

SCO still in business?

[Billly Gates]

How? I have not seen a version of Caldera Linux (now sco) sold in a very very long time now. No one buys SCO in 2017 either. They just already have them and the servers are 30 something years old now and are bandaided together. 95% of them have been migrated to Linux or Windows Server eons ago.

Where are they getting there money from as lawsuits are certainly not cheap?

Re:SCO still in business?

[110010001000]

They sell licenses for $699 each. That can buy some lawyers.

Re:SCO still in business?

[v1]

Well this appeal was lodged while they still had a few pennies left, so although there's an order now that allows the appeal, whether or not they can actually do it is a very different question.

Most (all?) of the SCO core have been disbarred, and most of the lawyers that have helped them in the past have been threatened by judges, so them finding someone to go in front of a judge with a straight face could be challenging.

The problem here all along has been one of odds. If you have a 1 in 100 chance of winning, but the reward is more than 100x your cost of litigation, AND you have enough of a warchest to file hundreds of lawsuits, you go for it. That's what they've been doing the last few years. That's why big companies like MS and Apple and IBM are frequent targets... not because their complaints have merit, but because of the slim chance of a huge payout. If they can win 1 in 100 and get enough of a win to refill their warchest, they just keep it up. This continues until they empty their warchest by either a long string of losses or a few major countersuits.

Re: SCO still in business?

[Anonymous Coward]

False. The licenses were discounted to $699 for a few months after the infringing source code was initially discovered in the Linux kernel. However, the price went up to $1399 after that introductory period.

Don't forget to pay your $1399 licensing fee, you cock-smoking teabaggers.

Re:SCO still in business?

[Billly Gates]

They sell licenses for $699 each. That can buy some lawyers.

Anyone besides 10 people bought them? I realized Microsoft 13 years ago funded them but ironically Windows 10 and Azure would have to pay some fees with the WSL Linux subsystem and Azure images so it would not be in there best interests for a SCO win.

My hunch is fucking thank Oracle due to the lawsuit with Android the courts have now interpreted clean room implementations and look alikes as actual derivatives. So Wine is owned by Microsoft even they didn't write it! GNUC is owned by AT&T even if they didn't write any of it. Look Linux has grep therefore it is owned by SCO etc.

I sense desperation, but Novel owns the Unix license so there is hope. This is a very very old argument and flame here from Bush's 1st term of office on slashdot. It comes to show how much corruption and problems with the legal system there is as it is unreasonable for a frivolous 15 year old lawsuit can continue.

Re:SCO still in business?

[Billly Gates]

IBM should contersue.

If CIOs read headlines like this it hurts Linux sales. Microsofts old Halloween documents showed most customers for Windows Server would bulk the most with legal issues and liabilities and instead of competing traditionally against Linux, the most effective counterattack is to have FUD.

Re:SCO still in business?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are they getting there money from as lawsuits are certainly not cheap?

They got it from their.

Re:SCO still in business?

[mangastudent]

My hunch is fucking thank Oracle due to the lawsuit with Android the courts have now interpreted clean room implementations and look alikes as actual derivatives.

Fortunately it's not hardly this bad. That decision was made by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a court that was created in 1982 and that is very biased towards rights holders. They are the court of appeal for patent issues, and Oracle was able to go directly to it because they had both patent and copyright issues in their appeal.

So the "you can copyright APIs" precedent they established isn't binding on any lower courts, excluding of course the court for the Oracle case for just that case.

But it does show how absolutely sociopathic Oracle the corporation is, they were sanguine with the prospect of catastrophic damage to the US software industry as long as they could squeeze billions out of the Goolag, in fact, far more than they bought Sun for.

Re:SCO still in business?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Novel owns the Unix license so there is hope.

Novell isn't really a company anymore, so much as a brand under Micro Focus (who bought Attachmate, who bought Novell).

Re:SCO still in business?

[Anonymous Coward]

My hunch is fucking thank Oracle due to the lawsuit with Android the courts have now interpreted clean room implementations and look alikes as actual derivatives.

Well they are. Design is as important as the implementation, if not more. And clean room implementers love stealing designs of other companies.

So there are various levels of stealing an IP product:
1) Stealing the final product (or piracy): requires no brains; just copy stuff.
2) Stealing the design (API, UI etc): Google re-implementing Java API, Linux re-implementing Unix API, Google re-implementing the iOS UI (Android) etc, C# copied Java's syntax.
3) Stealing the architecture: Windows NT copied the architecture of VMS. .net copied java's JVM.
4) Stealing the product idea itself: Zuck stealing idea of a social network from the twins to create Facebook, Zynga re-implementing games that look similar to the original.

So Wine is owned by Microsoft even they didn't write it

Well the Wine writers did not write the API for Windows. If you think you can design a brand-new API for a full-blown OS in a few months, you're full of BS.

Re:SCO still in business?

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's why big companies like MS and Apple and IBM are frequent targets."

It is not only about the payout in dollar value, but also market domination. Someone on that list of big companies you just named has been participating in the funding of this charade.

Re:SCO still in business?

[fahrbot-bot]

They sell licenses for $699 each. That can buy some lawyers.

Noting Microsoft charges for Windows Server 2016:

• Datacenter, Highly virtualized and software-defined datacenter environments, 16-cores: $6,155
• Standard, Low density or non-virtualized environments, 16-cores: $882
• Essentials, Small businesses with up to 25 users and 50 devices: $501

Re:SCO still in business?

[Billly Gates]

They sell licenses for $699 each. That can buy some lawyers.

Noting Microsoft charges for Windows Server 2016:

• Datacenter, Highly virtualized and software-defined datacenter environments, 16-cores: $6,155
• Standard, Low density or non-virtualized environments, 16-cores: $882
• Essentials, Small businesses with up to 25 users and 50 devices: $501

Still cheaper than VMWare ESXi and that doesn't include the licensing of guest operating systems. Of course didn't SCO Xenix or OpenServer once charged $1500 for an outdated TCP/IP stack?

Re:SCO still in business?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't steal intellectual "property", so your entire concept is utterly idiotic.

It's not actually a thing. Copying isn't stealing. So even a direct exact copy of code is NOT STEALING.

But your suggestion that it's somehow possible to "steal" an API is a whole new level of moronic.

Re:SCO still in business?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not actually a thing.

Yeah, faeries make things appear on the screen when you turn the computer on.

Physical "things" are not that valuable anyway. You can buy them for peanuts in the market. The scrap value of your $70k model S is probably $4k at best. So you're paying for the IP when you buy the car.

Re:SCO still in business?

[Anonymous Coward]

Balk, you dimwit.

Re:SCO still in business?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the faeries make a copy of the data on the disk into RAM, and then display the bits on the screen. Since they made a copy, the original data is STILL ON THE DISK, so once again, no stealing took place.

As for your car, I "took" a picture of it, so I guess you will charge me with stealing.

It was decided long ago that the phone book cannot be protected by copyright because it is just a collection of facts. I think an API falls in the same category.

Re:SCO still in business?

[Smallpond]

Yes. As a result of this suit the cost of Linux dropped in half!

Re:SCO still in business?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eye don't no wear their money comes from.

Re:SCO still in business?

[sk999]

In Bankruptcy Court, SCO never listed Caldera Linux as an asset. When the Unix assets were sold to Unxis (now Xinuos), Caldera Linux was not included. Which means that SCO still retains ownership of "OpenLinux".

R.E. money for lawsuits, one of the sillier things David Boies did was to set up a capped fee arrangement with SCO. Meaning that all the lawyer fees for the services of Boies, Schiller, and Flexner are already paid, so no future payments needed.

Re:SCO still in business?

[ninjaz]

In Bankruptcy Court, SCO never listed Caldera Linux as an asset. When the Unix assets were sold to Unxis (now Xinuos), Caldera Linux was not included. Which means that SCO still retains ownership of "OpenLinux".

The irony of ironies would be if they brought it back and by virtue of not having systemd, it shot to the lead in the Enterprise Linux market.

Re:SCO still in business?

[Desler]

And yet people like yourself will use the term “stealing” in reference to using BSD code in full compliance with the license.

Re:SCO still in business?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since they made a copy, the original data is STILL ON THE DISK, so once again, no stealing took place.

Why should the owner lose anything for the stealing to have taken place. The loss could be something else, like loss of market share, loss of buying customers, loss of revenue etc. Who died and made the definition of stealing to "one party deprives another party of some 'thing'."?

When it comes to IP, copying without permission is stealing.

As for your car, I "took" a picture of it, so I guess you will charge me with stealing.

Only if it was a secret prototype. Auto manufacturers camouflage their unreleased cars when testing them on public roads. They do it to prevent competitors stealing their design ideas.

It was decided long ago that the phone book cannot be protected by copyright because it is just a collection of facts.

Yes, from a programming perspective, a phone book is like instantiating an array of struct, which is "a collection of facts."

// API - NOT a collection of facts
typedef struct {
        char* name;
        char* address;
        char* number;
} phone_no_info;

phone_no_info phone_book[] = { // collection of facts
          {"foo", "123 some st.", "555-123-4567"},
          {"bar", "555 other st.", "555-333-4444"}, ....
}

I think an API falls in the same category.

You thought wrong. In the above example, the "phone_book" array is what's in the phone book, a collection of facts. You are using a pre-designed struct named phone_no_info, to fill up an array.

An API is not a collection of facts. In the above example, someone had to design the phone_no_info struct. They did not open up a "book of facts" to obtain the "struct phone_no," did they? They had to invent it, which means it's not a fact, it's a design artifact. And therefore, it can and should be protected by copyright.

 

Re:SCO still in business?

[Anonymous Coward]

> When it comes to IP, copying without permission is stealing.

No, it is infringement. If it were stealing
It would be defined legally that way.

Copying is not theft

Re:SCO still in business?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet people like yourself will use the term “stealing” in reference to using BSD code in full compliance with the license.

Precisely this. You can't steal what is freely given.

Re: SCO still in business?

[Anonymous Coward]

If what you say is true, all one enterprising phone book company had to do was claim copyright on "book listing name and address". Clearly this is not in the realms of copyright at all, but patent law.

Re:SCO still in business?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Meaning that all the lawyer fees for the services of Boies, Schiller, and Flexner are already paid, so no future payments needed.

And, if they refuse to continue the cases then TSG will sue them over breach of contract to get _all_ the 30million back.

Re:SCO still in business?

[michael_wojcik]

Novell isn't really a company anymore, so much as a brand under Micro Focus (who bought Attachmate, who bought Novell).

Yes. As far as I know, that means we (Micro Focus) still own the copyright on the UNIX sources that Novell got from USL. In 2010, Attachmate confirmed that it intended to keep them after the merger; and while I don't remember seeing anything official, there are various stories online that refer to MF as "the current owner of UNIX".

Novell transferred the UNIX trademark and the rights to the UNIX specification to The Open Group, for use in the Single UNIX Specification.

Paging Pamela Jones...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pamela Jones, please return to the Groklaw desk

Re:Paging Pamela Jones...

[cute-boy]

Pamela Jones, please return to the Groklaw desk

Hopefully with a better UX than was used last time!

FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

It's over. Your lawyers bankrupted you SCO. Your backers abandoned you. Close it out. You're done.

Re: FFS

[Kobun]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I have yet to see anything that unequivocally states what you are repeating throughout this discussion. Links, please.

Re: FFS

[OrangeTide]

The question has more to do with legal agreements between SCO and IBM. And the code is not something that is strictly defined as infringing SCO, as the code in question that is present in the Linux kernel (or as patched from IBM) was authored by IBM and copyright by IBM. That aspect the non-infringing nature of the code in Linux is not disputed.

SCO asserts they have every one who has agreed to their Unix license to be under a non-disclosure agreement. And that by releasing code to open source, IBM has violated an NDA. This isn't copyright law, and Linux is still clean. But it does mean that if IBM has violated the NDA that they could be paying some penalties and at the extreme end of what is possible IBM may be prohibited from distributing Linux further.

But you and I can still distribute Linux, including IBM's code. As we are not party to the agreements between IBM and SCO. And because we are following copyright laws to the letter, and IBM still has the right to license software they have authored even if distribution of that software violates an NDA agreement that none of us have signed.

(IANAL; but I can legally practice in Nevada)

Re: FFS

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Bullshit. Not a single word you wrote is true, not one single word.

Re: FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

> SCO actually did provide a list of infringing source code files,

There are many reasons why code that is in both Unix and Linux does not infringe any copyrights:

1. The code may have originated in BSD and is available under the BSD licence. Much was incorporated into Unix.
2. The code may have been in early versions of Unix where the copyright was not registered when this was a requirement in order to get protection.
3. The code may have been in a version that was released into the Public Domain, as Unix 32v was.

In any case Novell did not transfer any copyrights to SCO, so TSG have no standing in respect of those and Novell will not sue*.

* in fact much of Unix has third party copyrights, or none at all, and it would be impossible to locate many the actual copyright owners, even if it could be determined who they are.

Groklaw

[Salo2112]

Does this mean Groklaw is coming back to cover this mess again? :-)

Re:Groklaw

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are you, PJ???

In Praise Of Groklaw

[Freshly Exhumed]

Well, I guess its still not time to say "Goodnight PJ, wherever you are."

Owing for the most part to this ongoing SCO saga, the web was once gifted with the presence of Groklaw and the inimitable Pamela Jones, who brushed aside direct and very personal attacks from Darl McBride, Maureen O'Gara, and others as she provided insights and clarity for computer geeks on what tends to be a quite opaque judicial system. The comfort bar amongst FOSS supporters was raised significantly by her.

Now please, SCO, die already. Just die.

goodfella's

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't someone do the Goodfella's number on them once and for all please

The final word can only come from

[Anonymous Coward]

The final judgment can only come from Netcraft

It will be worded in either of two possible outcomes:
a) Netcraft confirms _ _ _ is dead.

Las Vegas ignores tech gambles, and moves on.

Halloween was 5 days ago

[OrangeTide]

Now is not the time for zombies to rise from their graves.

Re:Halloween was 5 days ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Today is Guy Fawkes Day. Remember remember.

It isn't SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

> ruled against SCO (whose original name was Santa Cruz Operation)

There was a company called "SCO (whose original name was Santa Cruz Operation)" but this isn't them, they changed their name to Tarantella when they sold the business to Caldera. Caldera changed their name to 'The SCO Group'.

SCO did not litigate against IBM, that was TSG.

Wha..?

[Rick Zeman]

My first thought this was one of the randomly generated Slashdot stories from last week from, say, 2006.

Re:Wha..?

[frankenheinz]

This has become the modern version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Wha..?

[thegarbz]

Thanks that was an awesome read.

patent trolss are like Zombies

[Anonymous Coward]

they never die. A Poster just mentioned how this one still won't die yesterday.... the SCO trolls must have heard him speaking. /slashdot fortune nohup rm -fr /& impostor

SCO are Patent Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO are Patent Trolls that think they own linux

Re:SCO are Patent Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

They think they own UNIX *and* Linux, and any other SYSV-like thing.

Re:SCO are Patent Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we sell then systemd?

Re:SCO are Patent Trolls

[Desler]

Except this is about copyrights not patents.

Wait, what

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

LOL, this truly is the lawsuit that will never die.

I fully expect my grandchildren will be reading about the "ongoing SCO vs IBM litigation" in 30 or 40 years.

This....Is.....Rediculous......

[modmans2ndcoming]

This is the zombie case that will never die!!!!!!!! I was in college when this stupid crap started......

Re:At this point

[Anonymous Coward]

Good question, but i would not want to satisfy the SCO fuckers with any kind of cash. They deserve nothing but boot to the face.

Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

This saga is turning into a Federal full employment program for white shoe lawyers.

When this lawsuit started

[guruevi]

Most of us were in high school or college, the majority of people in the world wasn't even born and we were raving over 36GB IDE hard drives.

broken

[Tom]

If you need any evidence that the justice system is fundamentally broken, look no further.

If you can keep your enemy in court for the time that it takes the kid you fathered on the first night of the case to grow up, something is seriously wrong with the concept of "justice" that such a system delivers.

Any and all consequences from the ruling except monetary are long done with.

SCO still exists?

[Opportunist]

What happened, did they forget to turn off the light in the building and some bums moved into the abandoned site?

omfg

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously sco, die

Ten claims are left to go back to district court

[UnknowingFool]

Of the 294 items in the Final Disclosure there are only 10 left in the case. Items 194-203. All of them deal with parts of SVR4 that IBM had put into AIX. The Appeals Court does not say that SCO's claims have been proven; they are saying that the claims should be heard in court as they were previously dismissed by the district judge. The items are:

• System V Package and Installation Tools from UnixWare/SVR4
• System V Truss technology
• SVR4 print subsystem
• System V ELF code
• System V atdialer code
• System V route.c code
• System V Korn Shell
• System V header files
• System V commands
• Man pages

From what I can tell some of those are needed for compatibility like ELF and header files. Korn shell, SVR4 print, and man pages are things that are way older than SCO's provenance.

SCO is a Phoenix that will rise from the ashes

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if a company that has been presumed dead for decades returns to the limelight.
I'm surprised that they still have the resources to continue their legal battle.

LOL!

[DaMattster]

I did not even know SCO was still around, much less relevant. I thought they went Chapter 7 belly-up.

Nostalgia troll is nostalgic

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to pay your $699 license fee, you cocksmoking teabaggers!

"Whose original name was Santa Cruz Operation"

[Chas]

NO! Whose original name was CALDERA.

They bought a bunch of IP from the ORIGINAL Santa Cruz Operation (which became Tarantella) and renamed themselves to "The SCO Group".

SCO != The SCO Group

Caldera started out as a legitimate systems and software vendor. Then their leadership got the bright idea to become a patent troll in Open Source Software.

Frankly, I'm stunned that a multiply bankrupted organization like TSG. They're like fuckin' herpes.

Tarantella is sort of gone

[Anonymous Coward]

Excerpt from wikipedia Tarantella was a line of products developed by a branch of the company Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) since 1993. In 2001, SCO was renamed Tarantella, Inc. as it retained only the division that produced Tarantella. On July 13, 2005, Tarantella, Inc. was purchased by Sun Microsystems for US$25,000,000. Tarantella exists now as a division of Oracle Corporation.[1]

When this started I was living at home

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a grown ass man now with kids. I wonder if it will be over before I have grandkids

Re:Fucking finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL Hahahahahaha!

No more

[Anonymous Coward]

That's 'nuff, Nuffer

Re:Ten claims are left to go back to district cour

[thegarbz]

Who cares. We don't use SysV anymore. It's about systemd now. :-)

In other news.... IBM and SCO still exist!

[gosand]

Wow... who knew?

One of the big reasons our government is so screwed up is because it's largely based on and perpetrated by our legal system.

Legal System in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

Can it be any more fucked up ?!?

Obama was a lawyer and kept well away from even speaking about reform in that area, no surprise there...

  Keep dreaming about affordable justice in the USA!

Re: Legal System in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

Replace Justice with healthcare, and the same applies.

Re:Ten claims are left to go back to district cour

[UnknowingFool]

Who cares.

Anyone who has been following this case for 14 years now

We don't use SysV anymore. It's about systemd now. :-)

What the heck are you talking about? The current case has nothing to do with Linux and is only dealing with SVR4 and AIX back in the days of Project Monterrey. And systemd is a replacement for SysV init. It has nothing to do with KornShell, ELF, SVR4 print, etc.

Re:Ten claims are left to go back to district cour

[hAckz0r]

Nice list. Too bad TSG doesn't actually own System V or SVR4. They own a defunct business for "administrating" the licensing program for the actual owner of System V, and since nobody is actually buying licenses to that ancient OS there is no money to be made in that "administrative" business. They have no standing in this case, and IBM still has counter charges to pound this peg into the ground. There is no point to this case continuing at all.

Re:Ten claims are left to go back to district cour

[thegarbz]

Fuck me man I even put a smiley at the end of the sentence. Lighten up.

What is this?

[Mike Van Pelt]

The next season of The Walking Dead?

Re:What is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! Where they lock Darl in a cell and feed him dog food sandwiches, and force him to listen to 'Easy Street' over and over...