In the ongoing saga where SCO group sues the world because they “allege” that Linux infringes on their copyrights, (A claim that Novell contests strongly), the first of the cases has been decided. In a huge blow to SCO, the case was for the most part thrown out entirely.
For a breakdown of the saga, see my earlier posts on the subject, here and here.
The short of the story, is that the judge found that Daimlerchrysler correctly certified their UNIX usage (which was nothing as they had not used it in 7 years) and that the case was essentially dismissed. He did however say that SCO can still question why it took DC 110 days to comply instead of the 30 days that SCO stipulated. DC replied that the license which was put in place before SCO had anything to do with it, did not stipulate a time frame.
That’s one down, four to go (SCO/IBM, SCO/Novell, RedHat/SCO and SCO/AutoZone) The AutoZone case is likely to be the last one resolved, as they recently won the stay they had requested. The other side of the coin, is that if IBM or Novell wins their cases, it’s all over for SCO because it means that they either were unable to find anything wrong with Linux (IBM case), or that they don’t have ownership of UNIX copyright (Novell case).
So breath a sigh of relief, this is a win for the good guys, and it means that cool Open Source (free) software like Apache, Linux, Openoffice and Mozilla are all just that little bit safer.
For some other coverage on the story, see TheRegister or Zdnet or ComputerWorld or read some of the eyewitness accounts at Groklaw.
regards
Franki
