Novell challenges SCO's Linux claims

[Refalm]

quote:Stephen Shankland: Novell, the second in the chain of four companies to own rights to the Unix operating system, is challenging the copyright infringement claims that the current owner of those rights, SCO Group, is making against Linux.

 In a letter to SCO released Wednesday, Novell asserted that it retains Unix patents and copyrights, demanded that SCO reveal where Unix source code has been copied into Linux, and raised its own threat of legal action to compensate for damage it says has been done to customers, programmers and companies using Linux.

 "To Novell's knowledge, the 1995 agreement governing SCO's purchase of Unix from Novell does not convey to SCO the associated copyrights," Novell Chief Executive Jack Messman said in the letter to SCO Chief Executive Darl McBride. He said that SCO evidently realizes this because "over the last few months you have repeatedly asked Novell to transfer the copyrights to SCO, requests that Novell has rejected."

 

quote:Stephen Shankland: But Novell attacked SCO's refusal thus far to disclose what code was allegedly copied. "It is time to substantiate that claim or recant the sweeping and unsupported allegation made in your letter. Absent such action, it will be apparent to all that SCO's true intent is to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt about Linux in order to extort payments from Linux distributors and users," Messman said in the letter.

 

quote:Stephen Shankland: Open-source advocate Bruce Perens lauded Novell's move. "Today, the company has done us a tremendous service by stomping upon an obnoxious parasite," Perens said in a statement. SCO "has loudly and repeatedly asserted that they were the owner of the Unix intellectual property, all of the way back to AT&T's original development of the system 30 years ago. They've lied to their stockholders, their customers and partners, the 1,500 companies that they threatened, the press, and the public."

 

quote:Stephen Shankland: SCO's actions have triggered derision from many Linux advocates, and industry analysts have said that SCO appears to be shifting from a company that sells software products to a company that licenses intellectual property.

SCO's actions triggered more intense scrutiny last week when it licensed Unix intellectual property to Microsoft, a Linux foe that has been trying for years to attract Unix customers to its own Windows operating system.

Read more.

[ May 28, 2003: Message edited by: Refalm ]

[DJ]

Good find

Dj

[DJ]

Here is SCO's follow up to that article

SCO Responds to Novell Claims

Dj

oops: fixed URL

[ May 28, 2003: Message edited by: Engineer ]

[solo]

found this in a comment to the 'we can stop SCO' thing that I saw on linux.org:

SCO: We think SCO code was stolen and put in Linux!
Linux community: What code?
SCO: UNIX CODE! Linux is t3h d00m3d! Teh PINGUIN IS GONNA FRY!!! MWAHAHAHA!!! IBM is going down!!
Microsoft: Come on SCO, just bend over a little farther...
SCO: And all you Linux infadels are going to get arrested!!! We don't know how, and we don't know when, but believe us, it will happen!!! In the middle of the night, when you think you are safe...
Linux community: OK, please shut up.

[Calum]

damn damn damn damn damn! no i'm not talking abou the SCO thing, i think it's good of them to give us a bit of entertainment, what i mean is that somebody else posted this a full day before i got to! i was on my way here to post this link when i saw Refalm had got there first!

well, maybe i will start three new topics about it anyway...  

[solo]

Now they've taken it too far. If they sue Linus they are going down.

 

quote:
McBride added that unless more companies start licensing SCO's property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds, who is credited with inventing the Linux operating system, for patent infringement.

Check  www.linux.org 's news, I wont link to the article cuz ya have to register.