Novell wins, SCO loses and the Linux world is safe again

After years of ugly lawsuits and court battles over copyrights between Novell and SCO, a Utah court ruled in favor of Novell and said SCO has no ownership in Unix code the company claimed was used in Linux. In a brief post on their web site Tuesday Novell said “this decision is good news for Novell, for Linux, and for the open source community.”

SCO, as you may recall was the company that claimed ownership of the Unix code and said some of that code was in Linux. SCO filed lawsuits against IBM, Novell and Red hat to prove its point – a point that could have potentially turned all three companies – and the entire Linux community – upside down had any of it been true. However, SCO could not come up with any viable examples of such transgression during the discovery phase. Yesterday a jury determined SCO didn’t own the code to begin with, so any Unix intellectual property used in Linux, if there was any, wasn’t theirs to claim or defend at all.

The Linux community is both relieved and elated. SCO wasn’t merely attacking a few companies, it was attempting  to change the entire open source landscape and there was uncertainty over how the case would affect the entire open source model.  After the lawsuits were initially filed, SCO became the most hated and vilified company in the tech world. For years SCO was seen asThe Big Bad Wolf to their defendants’ Three Little Pigs, but for all the huffing and puffing the company couldn’t blow down them down.

In fact, early on in the game SCO ran out of breath and had to be propped up by Microsoft, themselves searching for a way to combat the spread of Linux.

However, tonight, The Three Little Pigs and the entire Linux community can sleep well knowing that, finally, the Big Bad Wolf has been put in his place. SCO has no claim to Unix or Linux.The Linux world is safe again.

 

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