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| Authored by: PJ on Saturday, May 25 2013 @ 11:25 AM EDT |
Novell pledged never to do so, and the
jury ruled Novell had not transferred the
copyrights to SCO. That pledge stands in
the way of some nefarious possibilities.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: tknarr on Saturday, May 25 2013 @ 01:43 PM EDT |
Novell can't, and that'd bind anyone they sold the copyrights to at this
point. But leaving that aside, anyone who tried would still face the problem SCO
had of showing that
- the code came from Unix and not from some other
source,
- the code was actually copyrightable (see the infamous errno.h),
and
- the code amounted to enough of a chunk to make it not de
minimis.
And considering that it's IBM you'd be going up against,
and the mauling SCO got at their hands when SCO tried it, anyone with an ounce
of self-preservation would think long and hard about their chances of success
vs. their chances of becoming Londo's present to Vir. Frankly, if by some wild
chance you really do have a legitimate claim you'd be better off just presenting
your evidence to IBM and politely offering to negotiate a fully-paid-up
GPL-compatible license to the code.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: sk43 on Monday, May 27 2013 @ 09:44 PM EDT |
"... could whoever owns the Unix copyrights ever raise the issue that IBM
copied their code into Linux?"
Early on, SCO claimed that ALL the "derivative works" that IBM
contributed to the Linux kernel infringed SCO's copyrights (July 21, 2003
conference call with Darl McBride and David Boies.) At SCO Forum 2003 in August
2003, the total claimed copyright infringing code was over one million lines,
most of it from IBM.
From the SJ motions and the hearing on Mar 7, 2007, we learned that, in the
Final Disclosures, SCO alleged only 326 lines of code in the kernel, none of it
from IBM, infringed the UNIX copyrights.
When the claims go from over 1,000,000 lines to 326 lines, the last thing I
would worry about is someone else raising the same claims.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 28 2013 @ 09:28 AM EDT |
What's clear is that, to the extent Novell owns copyrights
pertaining to Unix, those copyrights were NOT transferred to
SCO. So SCO clearly does NOT have standing to sue on the
copyrights.
Novell's ownership is a bit murkier - Novell traces their
ownership back to Bell Labs, who trace their ownership back
to the University of California. Whether the University of
California truly "owned" full copyright to transfer to Bell
Labs is a bit questionable (they did NOT write all the code
from scratch).
As far as I'm aware, the authorship of individual portions
of the code is a lot murkier - most was written before good
source control or code signing keys, so it's not 100% clear
who wrote what, or if every one of those individuals agreed
to transfer their copyrights to U of C (and so, eventually,
to Novell).
But regardless, it would be a pretty high hill to climb for
someone who's NOT Novell to a.) prove they own copyright on
some portion of Unix, and b.) prove that they retain that
ownership. I think it's pretty safe from coming back. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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