So Novell has won over SCO in court today, with plenty of coverage as expected. But less has changed today than most people think.
SCO's case against IBM is dead, and its case against Novell is dead. Novell's case against SCO has just passed stage one, and still has leeway to sue others.
I'd been asked by someone if this meant that SCO would finally give up in court, or risk opening a pandora's box that would allow Novell to go after more than the $2.5M it was awarded today.
To me the answer seems obvious.
SCO has nothing to lose by staying in court; it's already in bankruptcy, really has no salable products, and is bankrolled to stay in court by a high interest loan that has no chance in hell of being repaid. Yet the court left the door ajar by saying that SCO still had title to its UnixWare enhancements. So they'll stay in court until the bankruptcy court forces them to stop. In fact, SCO really has no option but to stay in court until it ceases to exist.
SCO got slapped for misusing the money it received from Sun, but that's just one more slap to add to the list. The only real loser in today's proceedings (and a new player in the soap opera) is Sun. Since the court has judged that SCO did not own the intellectual property on Unix, it had no right to allow Sun to open-source Solaris. Novell is now in the position of asserting that Sun had no right to do so without ITS permission, and can now go after Sun for damages. Even if Sun pleads innocence it may still be required to un-open-source Solaris. Or, even worse, the circumstances may force Sun to strike a deal that -- in return for allowing Solaris to stay open -- un-encumbers parts of Sun's IP that it didn't want fully opened.
GPL Java, anyone?