24/7 Wall Street: The Future Of Linux Still Dark
“A federal judge ruled yesterday that Novell is the owner of the
critical copyrights for the Unix operating system. Another company
SCO Group had claimed these rights. As The New York Times writes:
‘The ruling could remove the cloud over open-source software like
Linux, an operating system loosely modeled on the proprietary
Unix.’ SCO had sued IBM (IBM) over intellectual property rights for
Unix, and that suit will now have to be dropped.“Two things will probably happen immediately. SCO shares, which
traded at $4.25 in June 2006, and are at $1.50 now, may sell off to
under $1. It is fair to ask if the company has any future now. The
firm only has about $6 million in revenue each quarter and losses
over $1 million on that…”
InformationWeek: Groklaw’s Pamela Jones On The SCO
Decision
“By now, everyone knows that the upcoming SCO vs. Novell trial
is mostly moot, because Judge Dale Kimball has ruled that Novell
owns the Unix copyrights. While the decision marks a welcome end to
the three-year-long legal saga, it spotlights the wimpy nature of
pundits and many in the computer industry, who cowered on the
sidelines, fearful of recommending or adopting Linux while the
litigation proceeded, lest SCO sue them, too.“The most notable case in point was Gartner’s 2003
recommendation that companies delay or take a go-slow approach to
Linux ‘until the merits of SCO’s claims or any resulting judgments
become clear…'”
Forbes: Big ‘No’ To SCO
“At long last, the SCO Group’s ugly, often farcical legal
crusade against Linux appears to be over.“SCO has spent four and a half years arguing that it owns the
copyrights to Unix, and that the free Linux operating system
includes code stolen from Unix…”