Battling UNIX Copyright

SCO takes up new claims against IBM in ongoing legal wrangling

The situation that SCO (ex Caldera) is involved in becomes more intricate in reclaiming the copyrights of UNIX against all those who use or sell Linux. After reporting the legal suit against the colossal IBM, which indicates that it violates the intellectual property by distributing into the Open Source community a UNIX code, SCO has now followed suit in another sector.
SCO, that has already demonstrated to have little modesty in reclaiming rights on the Penguin codes, has now proclaimed to the world the intention to launch a new license of UnixWare (the proper implementation of the UNIX System V). It is based on the measure for companies using Linux: in exchange, SCO offers this ultimate "immunity", rather than not excepting the judgement of violation of UNIX copyright.
SCO announced their registration on Unix System V copyright at the U.S. copyright office. It then seems assured to rake in money from the Linux users even before the court puts out a sentence that legitimizes or denounces the accusations fired at IBM and, indirectly, against the whole developing community of the Linux kernel.
The intention on SCO's part is to bind the codes coming from Linux in order to block its development.
What is read from this SCO communiqués is that the license received from this last guarantee uniquely allows "run-time use of Linux binary for all the commercial users that use any version of Linux based on the 2.4 kernel or those in succession." This signifies that SCO has the intention to overtake the GNU GPL license that today is distributed via Linux and to limit code access that surfaces from the free operating system. It can also be noted that the SCO is not restricting this stream to only code shares where property is reclaimed, but is generally speaking about the "kernel 2.4 and its following versions". SCO reaffirms that "thousands of files based on the UNIX derived code has contributed to the growth of Linux in various areas, among which is the multi-processing technology."
Both IBM and the Open Source community have reacted together against this tactical move by SCO that is defined as an absurd pretense, as well as illegal.
The unclear situation has become even more obscure by the fact that SCO has yet to demonstrate actual proof. This indicates that before each move, the society cases were almost empty and the management was going in search of possessing them. The fact that the last while has been useful in the growth of the society, it has continued to grow especially after the registration of the UNIX copyright. There has also been rumour that there might by some interest from the part of Microsoft of the intellectual property of SCO.
If a court recognizes the claims of the ex-Caldera, Bill Gates' company can find itself at the knife's helm in blocking the expansion of Linux where many problems are being created at the direction of Redmond.
Time will only tell what the judge's verdict will bring, but the feeling is that the story won't finish in a single stage.

Publication Date: 2003-08-03
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3000