Blang!

According to media reports (that get their news from Groklaw), the US District Court ruled that SCO does not own the copyright to Unix (Novell does). This effectively means the SCO has had their entire case pulled out from under them.

In a way this was a unexpected ending since originally the SCO case was all about the code. SCO had even gone so far as to show side-by-side comparisons of Linux and Unix code claiming this was proof that Linux had stolen code from Unix which they claimed to own. In the early days Linux advocates expected SCO’s attempt to show that code was stolen would fail miserably and that would be the end of it.

Unfortunately for SCO, screen shots of the supposed infringing code were leaked on the internet and quickly dubunked. Even more unfortunate for SCO, someone at Novell rememberd that the deal to sell Unix to SCO wasn’t quite what SCO thought it was and dug up the old deal which showed that it was actually Novell that still owned Unix.

SCO will likely appeal and there is still a chance the some of the rest of the case of SCO vs IBM will continue but does it really matter? While the legal issues are yet to be resolved, it was proven long ago that SCO will not have any significant or long term impact on Linux.

In the mean time SCO vs. Linux may have been a blessing in disguise. Things went so badly for SCO in so many different ways that it can only serve as a warning to other companies trying to put a stop to Linux through lawsuits. Microsoft has been rattling their patent saber for years but so far has not dared sue and one would think the SCO case had at least something to do with it.