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SCO Lawsuits Fail To Sustain Company

SCO's story is mildly intriguing, but I fear it would take more time to explain the whole saga than real interest levels would support. On the plus side, the tale is twisted, complex and possibly sleazy.

SCO was a major player in Linux back the day. In fact, Microsoft licensed SCO's software and sold it as Xenix until Redmond got single-OS religion.

In more recent years, SCO has claimed ownership of Unix (created by AT&T) and used that to sue Linux vendors (Linux was derived from Unix, which is one of the reasons I often doubt the originality and creativity of the open source movement).

The suits against powerhouses like IBM didn't work out, and now sue-happy SCO is filing for Chapter 11 so it can pay its creditors (maybe lawyers?) pennies on the dollar.

SCO may get a taste of its own medicine as Novell -- which bought Unix System 5 from AT&T but later sold rights to SCO -- can possibly claim ownership of some parts of Unix/Linux, and go after what's left of SCO for royalties.

Even more strange, SCO was bought by Caldera, which was founded by Novell founder Ray Noorda (now deceased).

Here's a possibly accurate view of SCO.

Got all that? If so, and if you have an opinion, write me at [email protected].

Posted by Doug Barney on September 17, 2007


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