SCO have been having a really tough time of late. All the latest turns have gone against SCO. Just to give the downed dog the extra kick, Novell have been quietly continuing what they started earlier in the year and are again ready to publicly contest ownership of Unix System V.
You can read the a more complete article at Groklaw. What it basically says is that after the public argument between SCO and Novell in August things did not quieten down.
SCO said that Novell had taken their toys away and gone home when in actual fact what Novell actually did was to look more carefully into the terms of sale. Once they completed this, they began registering the copyrights for quite a few versions.
Groklaw have analysed the registrations and found that Novell registered versions that SCO have not even noticed: Novell have registered claim that it is the rightful copyright owner of UNIX System V 2, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.2/386, 4.0, 4.1, 4.1ES, 4.1ES/386, 4.2, and 4.2MP.
Groklaw’s analysis of these registrations is simply that Novell seem to be saying that they and not SCO are the legal copyright holders of Unix System V.
If Novell still own Unix, will they use it in a similar way to SCO: try to lever some profit from Linux users: TurboTas can’t help but think they might. Not quite so brutal as SCO, but maybe not far short!
Here is the Novells answer to questions from Groklaw:
“PROVO, Utah Dec. 22, 2003 Novell believes it owns the copyrights in UNIX, and has applied for and received copyright registrations pertaining to UNIX consistent with that position. Novell detailed the basis for its ownership position in correspondence with SCO. Copies of our correspondence, and SCO’s reply, are available here. Contrary to SCO’s public statements, as demonstrated by this correspondence, SCO has been well aware that Novell continues to assert ownership of the UNIX copyrights.”
TurboTas says ‘Happy XMas, Darl’.