Open Sauce Software
Tasty titbits from people using Linux and other open source software in business.
Friday 18 July 2008, 3:26 PM
Novell beats SCO - could Sun be next?
It looks like the long-running SCO-Novell trial is over, and justice is served. But could this lead to trouble for Sun?
It's nicely explained by Pamela Jones at Groklaw as usual. Judge Kimball has upheld his original decision from last year, that Novell, not SCO, owns Unix. So SCO's original assertion that Linux infringed its rights falls to the ground. And it's been ordered to pay a surprisingly slight $2.5 million to Novell.
Of course, this being SCO, it's not really all over. "I think they have to appeal, frankly, if they can find a way," says Jones.. "Otherwise, SCO will sell the litigation rights to whoever was really behind this, or a surrogate, and off we go again. But it's their decision. SCO will try to be bad no matter what anyone does."
And then there's Sun. Sun bought rights from SCO, to allow it to build OpenSolaris and open-source it. SCO didn't own Unix, Novell did. So, it's been suggested that Novell could take action over OpenSolaris.
Alternatively, as Novell and Sun both actually like open source software, they could team up and promote OpenSolaris, according to one poster at Groklaw.
As yet, there's no comment on what Novell plans to do.
PreviousComments on this post
It's still hard to believe SCO did what it did and said what it said. The company's effectively destroyed, open source has been proven highly resistant to legal attack, and the circus long since packed up and moved on. If it was a cunning plan by unseen forces, as opposed to say massive industrial-strength stupidity, then all one can say is that those forces were arrogant, scheming, destructive -- and, in the end, pretty farcical.
Mmm.
Never attribute anything to cunning which can be better explained by stupidity, and never, never underestimate corporate stupidity.
What makes me really sad is to think of how much good could have been done with all the money that was wasted on this.
