Caught in the crosshairs

On March 8, 2010, Linux was caught in the crosshairs once again when the SCO Group went to court against Novell. Both software companies had used Linux, but this so-called "slander of title" lawsuit asserted that Novell was taking the credit for SCO's work. In other words, Linux was successful because of Novell—even though SCO allegedly purchased the copyrights from them in 1995.¹

How can an open-source program get in the crosshairs of something like this? It's a wonder that this sort of mess hasn't happened more often. It's true that Linux falls under the GNU General Public License, which allows anything registered under it to remain in the public domain. In other words, it protects a product from users who want to make money off it by making it a brand name (like Windows or Mac OS). But Linux is loosely based on Unix, which Novell bought from AT&T in 1993. ² Whoever owns Unix ultimately cashes in on Linux's success. So the questions are as follows:

1: Who owns the copyrights?
2: Who owns the intellectual property (IP) rights?

This isn't the first time that SCO took a corporate giant to court. In 2003, they filed a three-billion-dollar suit against IBM for plagiarizing SCO's Unix code. But according to Eric Raymond—programmer and author of Cathedral and the Bazaar—SCO had put its code into the public domain, much of which was already obsolete and incompatible with Linux. Interestingly, IBM filed a suit against SCO that same year.³

Four years went by, during which SCO took Novell to court. But on August 12, 2007, Judge Dale Kimball ruled that Unix was Novell's intellectual property.⁴ This damaged SCO's case on the first major front: by removing their IP rights, the court essentially put the remaining rights into Novell's hands. IP rights are critical in a case like this; if someone's property is his own invention and idea, it makes sense that his copyrights would be his own, too.

That is, unless he sold them and confirmed the sale in writing.

This was the basis for the March 2010 case, in which SCO testified that Novell wanted to sell the Unix copyrights. If SCO were right, then they would cash in on Linux's success. Novell asserted that they didn't actually sell them, and the lawyers who wrote the original agreement specified that Novell would sell Unix and keep the copyrights.⁵

The case ended three weeks later, on March 30, 2010. By unanimous vote, the jury found that Novell never transferred the copyrights.⁶ Both the copyrights and IP rights remain in Novell's hands, and Linux is out of the crosshairs of a messy lawsuit. A case like this demonstrates the differences between truth and lies: Truth stands up to scrutiny, but lies will always fall apart under pressure.

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Works Cited

1. SCO versus novell trial opens.

2, 5. Groklaw - Day 2 of the SCO v. Novell Trial.

3. Linux Lawsuit.

4. SCO appeals Unix ownership decision.

6. Groklaw - Novell Wins Again.