Comments about ‘Arguments begin in SCO v. Novell over copyrights’

"The outcome of this lawsuit will determine whether SCO can pursue a suit it filed earlier against IBM, which it says placed Unix code into the Linux operating system. That would open the door to charging Linux users a licensing fee, something the open-source community strongly opposes".

I would suggest anyone interested in this case avail themselves of the excellent resource over at the Groklaw website . They have been following this case since 2003 (yes it has dragged on that long)
They have both all the available filings from both sides and an explaination of what it all means in laymans terms.
Oh and as a matter of interest, SCO already lost this case before a judge ealier. An appeals court ruled that some of thier claims should go to trial, but on the whole this is basicly just a rehash of an already failed case.

I wonder if IBM is funding the Novell fight because it knows how costly it will be when SCO wins the Novell suit, which it will. The smartest thing IBM could do would be settle then "give" Linux to the public making them the heros.

"pcdaveskibum" here and at the SLT sounds like a SCO insider. SCO's plan was to be so annoying that IBM should buy them off. I see SCO continues to push that old line.

IBM doesn't work that way. IBM will never pay danegeld.

Furthermore, the public doesn't want IBM to settle. There is no code owned by SCO in Linux - when asked to show the evidence, SCO at first refused. SCO said it would allow Linux developers to hide the evidence. That's impossible for Open Source; the current and all previous versions are all public. Also, no Linux person wants SCO code in linux. If identified, it will be removed. SCO claimed removal would be impossible as it was "millions of lines". When pressed to provide evidence, they showed 20 lines of code at SCOForum which turned out to be ancient code owned by BSD, not SCO, and since removed from linux. In the IBM court case they showed only ~300 lines of code which is likely uncopyrightable. SCO doesn't understand that no linux person wants SCO's intellectual property. Linux's users want unencumbered code, not a deal with the devil.

It doesn't matter one wit to Linux users whether or not SCO wins anything in SCO vs Novell because they have never demonstrated that there is a single line of code in Linux that infringes on copyrighted Unix code. In addition, they never made any attempt whatsoever to try to mitigate the alleged copyright infringement. Indeed, for years SCO refused to identify what code they were talking about for fear that it would be removed, and when they did identify a few lines of code, it turned out that it didn't even belong to them.

I'm sure IBM is funding Novell in this action, and that it was IBM that paid Novell to state that it never sold the copyrights to Santa Cruz.

IBM also knows that anything based on AIX that they contributed to Linux constitutes a "derivative work" of Unix, and doesn't want to ever have to face the day they'll need to be accountable for it.

Groklaw is better known as Crocklaw! It is so biased that it can't see straight. I used to follow it until it become so unbearable. It's like asking an "independent" al qaida organization to judge the outcome of the Guantanamo trials. Groklaw is run by a "PJ" that no one has ever seen or heard. Any reasonable person would recognize the fraud involved there and any reasonable reporter who know that it doesn't quote unverifiable sources.

So if Novell wins they keep copyrights to pre-1995 UNIX that they have no sales for. If they did sell everything else I have no idea what the can do with them. May not even be able to recover their legal costs.

If Novell loses they may take a big financial hit.

Pretty big risk for a limited payoff.