SCO v. Novell was a Federal (U.S.) lawsuit concerning the ownership of the Unix O.S. The battle was between the companies SCO and Novell. It originated with SCO suing IBM for royalties after IBM used a copywritten Unix version obtained from SCO to develop their software. Novell then got into the act, claiming that SCO’s Unix actually belonged to Novell, and all the proceeds that SCO had made rightfully belonged to Novell.
Does this seem convoluted? Wait, it gets worse.
After a few years of litigation in state (Utah) and federal courts, and even the International Chamber of Commerce's International Court of Arbitration in Paris, France getting involved, Novell won their suite in U.S. court, and was awarded $2,547,817. Personally, I doubt that they will be able to collect much, after SCO declares bankruptcy. This is, however, a large victory for the open source community, for SCO was stopped from charging royalties for open source software that they did not actually own, and paid a severe penalty for trying. Novell has publicly stated that they will not sue anyone over the use of Unix.
SOURCES:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/16304/ding_dong_scos_trial_is_dead_linux_is_free
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_v._Novell
www.novell.com/prblogs/?p=2153
www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100309181439569
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment