AT&T give SCO's lawsuit a right rogering from behind

Lemming

All I have to say to this article is:

OOOOOH, can you FEEEEEEL it?!! Yeah SCO baby, feel it!!!

AT&T have clarified their original "derivative works" clause from the 1985 UNIX agreement, and it doesn't bode well for SCO any way you look at it.

FEBRUARY 16, 2004

This is the week. On Nov. 18, 2003, The SCO Group announced that it would sue some corporate Linux user within 90 days. That put the deadline at Monday, Feb. 16. Has SCO sued? I don't know -- I'm writing this a few days before that deadline, and my time machine is in the shop, so you'll have to go to Computerworld.com for the latest news. (Editor's note: No new legal actions have been announced as yet this week.)

But regardless of whether SCO has already sued a user or is just running a little behind schedule, winning any Linux lawsuits may have just gotten a lot harder for SCO.

Who said so? AT&T -- in 1985.

Here's what happened: On Friday, Feb. 6, at a court hearing in SCO's lawsuit against IBM, SCO laid out its clearest explanation yet of why it believes it owns source code that's in Linux.

SCO argued that it doesn't own just the Unix source code originally written by AT&T. SCO said it also owns all additions to Unix that were ever made by companies that licensed Unix source code -- including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and even Microsoft.

Those additions are "derivative works" of Unix. And the Unix licenses that AT&T issued said derivative works are to be treated "as part of the original software product."

So since IBM developed a file system and added code for it to AIX, IBM's version of Unix, SCO argued that the code now belongs to SCO. And since IBM later donated that IBM-developed file-system code to Linux, it's in Linux without SCO's permission.

As a result of such donations, there are millions of lines of vendor-contributed, SCO-owned code in Linux. At least that's SCO's interpretation of the Unix license.

Not surprisingly, IBM disagrees. So does Novell, which bought the Unix source code from AT&T and sold the Unix business to SCO in 1995.

IBM believes that it still owns any code it added to the AT&T Unix code for AIX. So IBM can remove and reuse that code in its own products, or even give it away to Linux. That's how "derivative works" function under copyright law, though the Unix license is a contract.

Who's right? Looks like a nasty he said/she said court fight over what that derivative-works clause means, doesn't it?

But on the same day SCO's lawyer was explaining his legal theory in court, Novell was faxing something to SCO's offices.

It was a copy of "$ echo," a newsletter published by AT&T in 1985 for its Unix licensees. In it, AT&T clarified what that derivative-works clause in the Unix license meant. (Apparently, there was confusion about it even then.)

AT&T said it wanted "to assure licensees that AT&T will claim no ownership in the software that they developed -- only the portion of the software developed by AT&T."

In other words, AT&T never intended for Unix licensees to give up ownership of code they added to their versions of Unix. That was never part of the deal. And the deal AT&T cut is the one SCO has to live with -- even 19 years later. That's how contracts work.

Of the million lines of Linux code that SCO claims IBM hijacked from Unix, SCO hasn't identified a single line that came from the original Unix source code. It was all created by IBM. According to AT&T in 1985, that means it's IBM's to keep -- or give away. And SCO's theory that it owns Linux code appears to be kaput.

Of course, AT&T's blast from the past won't bring the gavel down on SCO's suits tomorrow. IBM, Red Hat and Novell are already in court with SCO. If a corporate Linux user joins them, even with good lawyers and help paying for them, any suit is likely to be painful and long.

But it helps a lot to have the company that wrote those Unix licenses on their side. Even if it's AT&T in 1985. Because 1985 just may mark the end of SCO's lawsuits -- and the beginning of Linux's future.

nadir

Its all just totally rediculous, some recent articles ive seen in the newspapers are blowing it all out of proportion, giving the impression that linux is under threat. Its all crap imo

Ryaner

Originally posted by nadir
Its all just totally rediculous, some recent articles ive seen in the newspapers are blowing it all out of proportion, giving the impression that linux is under threat. Its all crap imo

Linux is far from crap. Windows yes, it'll prob never leave as my main os because it's so damn handy for day to day things.
Linux and unix (when I get able to use it properly :P) is so much faster. The system can be really stripped down and run stuff alot quicker.

This is all good news for linux. I'm quite surprised I missed it