[Wolves] Novell wins vs. SCO: UNIX Copyrights NOT transferred

[Adam Sweet]

dandart at googlemail.com wrote:

> On , Andy Jewell <Andy.Jewell at sysmicro.co.uk> wrote:
>  > Hi guys,
>  >
>  > The SCO v.s Novell Slander of Title case verdict is in...
>  >
>  > The copyrights were not transferred to SCO.
>  >
>  > Link: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100330152829622
>  >
>  > * Therefore Novell did not slander SCO's Title (to the copyrights).
>  > * Therefore they have no case against Linux
>  > * No case against IBM for inducing copyright infringement in Linux
>  > * No case against Autozone for infringement by using Linux
>  > * No case against Daimler Chrysler for infringement by using Linux
>  >
>  > Of course, they will probably appeal.

 > I both bet and hope MS has no justification to charge people for using
 > Linux.

While Microsoft's involvement with the SCO case has been suggested (SCO 
received major funding from Baystar, an MS owned investment firm shortly 
before the case), I don't think this case in particular will influence 
Microsoft's tactics towards Linux any further than it did 5 years ago.

My own feeling was that this was always just a Microsoft backed attempt 
to test the validity of the GPL in court. While this case hasn't 
answered that question due to it going off into whether SCO actually 
owned the rights to UNIX, other lower profile cases into GPL 
infringement have shown that the GPL stands up. SCO, after claiming 
hundreds of lines of UNIX code were copied and used in the Linux kernel, 
have only been able to provide about 3 lines of code as examples, which 
were header definitions and include statements, which w

I still think Microsoft will continue to use the tactic of litigating 
against companies on a case by case basis, such a the Tom Tom case. I 
don't think they will go after average Joe Linux users or even 
individual companies with Linux deployments directly as it's PR 
disaster, but they will continue to go after Linux vendors and suppliers 
(including people who ship products which use Linux, like Tom Tom) with 
patent claims and either reach settlements or make people license the 
patented IP.

I'm always reminded of this blog post by Mitch Kapoor of the Mozilla 
Foundation when I think about the whole Microsoft software patent situation:

http://blogs.osafoundation.org/mitch/000842.html

Regards,

Adam Sweet

-- 

http://blog.adamsweet.org/