Back to Tech Blog homepage
An old Linux foe is dealt a blow
August 10, 2007
It wasn’t that long ago that Darl McBride was the most hated man in the tech industry.
As CEO of SCO Group, the legal campaign he launched against IBM in 2003 sent a shiver through the entire open source world. If SCO could prove it owned the key intellectual property in the Unix operating system - and that some of that code had found its way into Linux - then he could have levied royalties on every Linux user.
No wonder Microsoft, smelling a chance to strike back at IBM and Linux, was quick to pay SCO $16.75m for a "licence" to Unix - cash that helped to fund the company’s long legal campaign that was to follow.
Any remaining power that Mr McBride had to terrify the open source world largely evapourated on Friday. A court in SCO’s home state of Utah ruled that the company never owned the copyright in the Unix software. That had remained instead with Novell, which had sold SCO the code some years before. Since Novell (distributor of SuSe Linux) had already expressly waived any claims against IBM in regards to any rights it has in Unix, that pretty much seems to wrap it up - subject, of course, to any appeals from SCO.
There was also a pleasing footnote for all those who saw Microsoft’s payment to SCO as a devious ploy to undermine IBM. The court ruled that SCO would now have to pay the Microosoft licence fee over to Novell - along with another $10m it got from selling a licence to Sun, which had reasons of its own for wanting to undermine Linux. The Groklaw blog, a long-time opponent of McBride, could be forgiven its yodel of celebration this afternoon.
