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SCO: The zombie flick's final scene
7 comments- TAGS:lawsuit, legal, Linux, Novell, SCO, Sun, Unix
- IT TOPICS:Government & Regulation, Linux, Management, Open Source, Operating Systems
You know zombie movies. You chop 'em. You set 'em on fire. You machine-gun 'em and they just keep coming.
They're scary at first, but then, except for the very best zombie movies - Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later - the zombies get to be pretty darn boring. SCO, the zombie that wanted to gack Linux, had gotten to be really, really boring.
But, even the longest zombie film finally comes to an end, and it looks like SCO's day has finally come to a close. On July 16th, Judge Dale Kimball of the U.S. District Court ruled in Novell's favor in SCO vs. Novell.
It wasn't a complete victory for the good guys. But, hey in any zombie movie, you know there will be a lot of collateral damage. SCO did lose all the important points and now the bankrupt company is left owing Novell $2.5-million.
The SCO legal horror show probably isn't completely over yet. Some idiot always wants to do a sequel, but this is the end of the main saga. Novell owns Unix. SCO doesn't. SCO is in bankruptcy. This is the end of the story. Oh, and for the spinoff, we have the possibility of Novell vs. Sun since, according to the judge; SCO never owned the IP rights to the Unix that it sold to Sun, which Sun then turned into part of OpenSolaris.
Whoops.
That's a story for another day and one more obstacle that Sun will need to overcome.
For now, I just want to sit back and go 'Finally!"
I have been covering SCO and its legal battles against Linux from the very beginning. Actually, since I had already been covering SCO, Caldera, Linux, and Unix before SCO's ownership, the Canopy Group, decided it was a smart idea to sue IBM -- the idiots -- I was covering this mess before it even existed.
I'll take my hat off to Pamela Jones of Groklaw, who knows this case better than anyone else on the planet, but other than her, I'm certain I've spent more time and energy covering the SCO saga than anyone else. And, let me tell you, I hated this movie from day one.
SCO may have managed to fool some people into thinking it had real evidence that Linux had infringed on Unix. I knew that it didn't. I knew that once SCO decided to makes it case against IBM about Linux, instead of the much smaller issue of 64-bit Unix and Project Monterey, the end of this horror movie was already pre-ordained.
The surprise twist was that it was Novell instead of IBM making the final shot. So, while there still may a twitch or two left in the SCO zombie franchise, this court decision is the real final chapter.
Thank goodness. I was more than ready to leave the theater after watching this zombie movie for years.
Oh, and Ballmer, in case you have any idea of trying out your horror flick about Linux, the one with all the patent devils, just remember what happened to SCO. You might also want to keep in mind that the ending of your patent FUD has also already been written. Some of us do remember that the source for your "Linux contains x number of patents violations" already said you got it wrong almost four years ago.
It's not so much that I don't want you to make any more mistakes Mr. Ballmer. I know you'll make lots. It's just that I really don't want to spend the next few years of my life writing out in detail how yet another doomed legal attempt to stop Linux comes to a horrible ending. I've already sat through this movie with SCO. I don't want to it again.
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