The confrontation between SCO and Novell has taken a new
twist, with SCO claiming it has clear, documented evidence which
proves its ownership of Unix operating system."We are restating that SCO owns the Unix
operating system along with all the contracts, claims and
copyrights associated with Unix," said SCO chief executive officer
Darl McBride.
"We also reassert that portions of System V
code are found in Linux," he added, as well as portions of
resulting derivative code.
The battle of who actually has Unix property
rights surfaced three weeks ago, when SCO warned all commercial
Linux users that they could be using its code illegally and
recommended that they seek legal advice to help them decide what to
do about their use of Linux.
That was followed last week by Novell's call
for SCO to put up or shut up over its allegations. In a letter on
its website from Novell CEO and president Jack Messman, the company
lashed out by challenging SCO's assertion that it owns the
copyrights and patents to Unix System V.
Novell, which had previously acquired the Unix
systems business of AT&T, broke up and sold its Unix properties
in 1994 and 1995. One of those deals was with the former Santa Cruz
Operation, which was bought by Caldera International and later
became SCO.
In March, SCO sued IBM for $1bn, alleging that
the company misappropriated trade secrets related to SCO's Unix
products to benefit IBM's Linux strategy.
SCO's McBride said last week that some
industry analysts had accepted an offer to view some allegedly
misappropriated code and that they have come away agreeing with
some of SCO's assertions.
"These initial reviewers appear to be coming
to the same conclusions as we have, namely that SCO's Unix source
code has made its way into Linux," he said.
McBride claimed that two documents found by
SCO confirmed the company's claims. The documents are an "Asset
Purchase Agreement" between Novell and SCO from September 1995, and
an amendment that followed in October1996.
Novell has acknowledged that the amendment
"appears to support SCO's claim that ownership of certain
copyrights for Unix did transfer to SCO in 1996".
However, Novell added, "The amendment does not
address ownership of patents, however, which clearly remain with
Novell." It also asked SCO to address its "still unsubstantiated
claims against the Linux community".
Gartner analyst George Weiss said SCO's
documents could bolster the company's claims. "They have documents
that to me look very legitimate," he said.
Weiss had met SCO to review the Unix claims,
but he refused to sign a nondisclosure agreement, so he was not
permitted to view some of the contested code. SCO "gave me enough
information that there could be something there [to the claims]",
said Weiss. "They're not doing something frivolous."
In a bid to clarify its claims against
commercial users of Linux, McBride said he would try every option
before resorting to litigation. "We plan to work out the issues
with customers in a short, straightforward and amicable way," he
insisted.
SCO has been receiving feedback from
commercial users and is developing licensing programs to resolve
any issues, which will be unveiled in July, McBride said.
McBride added that SCO expected to resolve
issues with commercial Linux suppliers, such as Red Hat and SuSE
Linux, "in ways short of litigation".
Todd Weiss writes for Computerworld