Linux Solutions

While the battle between Novell and SCO continues with regards to potential royalties due to Novell for the use of “their” Linux code, it seems that events have taken a controversial turn. Darl McBride, the CEO of SCO, was called to the stand this week and under oath he made the claim that Linux is a copy of UNIX and as such the royalties which Novell are claiming are null and void. So what really is happening?

This is the latest in a number of twists and turns which revolve around code which Novell owned the rights to but were supposed to have signed over to SCO sometime ago. The claim by Novell has been reduced to some $20 million after the company began to appreciate the fact that some of their compensation claims were actually invalid.

The case is growing more complicated by the day because while there is evidence that they signed the rights over, there is a counter claim that they still held rights to the royalties on the binaries. The case may soon become academic because on the eve of the court case SCO filed for bankruptcy protection in a clear attempt to protect the business prior to any claim by Novell.

The case is set to continue for some time yet and there are many observers who believe that even if SCO lose this battle they will look to exhaust the appeals process further delaying any possible payments and forcing Novell to come to a lower settlement figure.

Whether Linux is a direct copy of UNIX is debateable but it may just be a coincidence that Linus Benedict Torvalds (the man behind the Linux Kernel) was also heavily involved in the UNIX project. At the end of the day this court case seems unlikely to affect the wider Linux industry where the open source code is very much in the public domain.