It was the story of a lifetime. On 6 March this year, SCO Group filed suit in
a district court in the US, claiming that IBM had appropriated its Unix
intellectual property and passed on to copyright protected SCO code to Open
Source Linux. If nothing else, the amount of damages claimed—a cool billion
dollars—was enough to make people take note. The fact that this legal
challenge came from a company that was even then actively espousing Linux was
only the first of the many twists in the tale.
Typically, a case such as this could take a long time, maybe years, to wind
its ways through the courts to its final conclusion.
But what added a sense of urgency to the situation was the
SCO Group’s threat to withdraw from IBM, its license to Unix in a hundred days
(13 June 2003), and the fact that it sent out letters to 1,500 companies—stating
that they might be legally liable, if they were using Linux.
First the history, and the answer to the question of who owns
Unix.
The SCO Group of today is what till recently was Caldera, a
Linux company. But the story actually starts long before that, at the most
unlikely of places—at Microsoft!
The
Gist of the Suit
The
genesis of the current lawsuit is in a collaborative effort called
Project Monterey that IBM and the original SCO took up to create a
Unix variant for the 64-bit Intel architecture. This venture was
given up without seeing the light of the marketplace. SCO’s case
is that IBM had access to the Unixware source code and has wilfully
copied code from Unixware into the Linux kernel. Further, it claims
that IBM did this with the intent of killing off commercial Unices
in favour of Linux.
Long back, long before the days of a successful Windows,
Microsoft dabbled with the idea of creating a Unix for the Intel CPU. That was
Xenix. Xenix never achieved success in the market. Santa Cruz Operation (the
original SCO) brought the rights to Xenix and it became SCO Openserver.
Time to take a break from SCO and focus on Novell. When
merger talks between Microsft and Novell failed, Novell went on to acquire the
Unix operations of AT&T (called Unix Systems Labs). AT&T Unix (System V)
was subsequently renamed UnixWare.
Subsequently, Novell sold off its Unix interests, but with a
catch. It sold the software part to SCO, but gave the trademark name
"UNIX" to the X / Open Company, an industry standards organization. X/
Open Company was subsequently renamed as the OpenGroup, and continues to hold
the rights to the Unix trademark and specifications.
SCO, which now had two Unices—OpenServer and UnixWare —underwent
many transformations. First, it split into two, with Tarentella spinning off as
an independent company, with a product of the same name. The remaining Unix part
was acquired by Caldera, a Linux company. So, now, Caldera had two Unices and a
Linux distribution.
Floundering
Scrip Perk Up On Lawsuit
Low share prices and a change of chief executive led to
Caldera refocusing on its Unix business and renaming itself into the SCO Group
of today.
Unix Massage Chairs?
Software is not the only thing to bear the Unix name. In fact, the home page of Dennis Ritchie, one of the two originators of Unix (Ken Thomson is the other), lists many interesting items from across the globe that go under the name of Unix. These range from diapers and fire extinguishers to a Unix dance bar.
In
the US, you can even now order Unix-brand massage chairs made in
Korea. You can find two models at www.thefactoryoutlet.com.
Conspiracy theories Conspiracy theories abound as to who would actually benefit from the
lawsuit. The first of these is that the SCO Group, being in trouble, with low
sales and share prices, is setting itself up for a buyout, possibly by IBM
itself. The lawsuit is just a way of accelerating the process, or for increasing
the asking price manifold.
More Unix Lawsuits
This is not the first time that Unix is becoming the subject of litigation.
In 1984, Nippon Marantz, a Japanese company, threatened to sue AT&T over the use of the word ‘Unix’. Marantz owned the copyright to the word Unix in Japan, for electrical equipment.
Probably the first of the lawsuits was between the University of California, Berke-ley and AT&T, about AT&T’s Unix code being used in BSD Unix, etc. There is also a counter-suit filed by
UC, Berkely against AT&T for moving freely distributed code from the BSD version into AT&T Unix, after removing the copyright notices.
It did not take all that long for the needle of suspicion to
move toward Microsoft. Many see Linux as the last attempt to slow down, if not
stop, Microsoft on its way to complete operating systems domination. Anything
that hurts Linux obviously helps Microsoft. Microsoft deciding to license the
code from SCO only added to the suspicions.
IBM is the third-favorite in the list of the conspiracy
theorists. IBM is the company that has contributed the most, and also possibly
benefitted the most from the Linux surge. Some see in all this an attempt by IBM
to control, if not own exclusively, Linux.
Dramatis
Personae: How the Tale Twists
Ray
Noorda:The story starts
with Ray Noorda. Noorda helped build Novell to great heights. The
failure of merger talks with Microsoft led to his buying up a number
of products and companies that could compete with it, including the
original Unix rights from AT&T. Noorda funded Caldera (founder
Ransom Love is ex-Novell) and his investment firm Canopy Group is
today a significant shareholder in the SCO Group (new SCO).
Darl
McBride:Current CEO of SCO
Group, another Novell alumnus. His CV includes assignments at two
start-ups for which he helped raise $50 million each in venture
financing.
David
Boies:The Lawyer for the
SCO Group in its lawsuit against IBM. Already famous for leading the
US government’s case in its anti-trust suit against Microsoft and
winning many famous court room battles against the software giant,
including with Bill Gates. Years back, in 1969, when the US
government filed an anti-trust suit against IBM, it was Boies, then
at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, who successfully defended IBM! Boies
moved on to Boies Schiller & Flexner. Incidentally, IBM has gone
back to Cravath, Swaine & Moore to fight its current case
against SCO.
Microsoft:SCO would never have existed, but for Microsoft’s Xenix.
Microsoft re-entered the picture recently by licensing the Unix code
and intellectual property from the SCO Group. This deal was worth
about $10-12 million and is one of the reasons why SCO was able to
show a profit last quarter, as against losses in the past. Many
accuse Microsoft of signing the deal purely as a grandstand to
strengthen SCO Group’s case against Linux, with the aim of
weakening the freeware operating system’s challenge to its own
Windows.
Novell:Forget that Novell sold the Unix code to SCO, and that the
current SCO Group CEO comes from Novell. Novell is even now involved
in the case. It had recently announced that future versions of its
NetWare would be built around the Linux kernel. Adding fuel to the
fire, Novell joined issue with SCO, stating that it still owned the
copyrights and patents as per the contract it entered into with SCO
to sell Unix to it, and that it had sold only the code. A further
twist was added when SCO Group fished out an amendment signed a year
later, that transferred the copyrights to SCO. The question of
patents still remains.
What if the SCO Group is right? Remember that the case against IBM is for breach of contract, related to
project Monetrey agreements. At this point, no case has been brought forth
against Linux itself, though the SCO Group has given some indications about that
being its direction.
If the SCO Group wins this case, then any number of scenarios
can play out. The most plausible of them are outlined below:
Scenario I: IBM buys out SCO. This is conspiracy
theory number one. IBM could either forget the issue, make the whole AT&T
code base Open Source, or (according to conspiracy theory three) proceed to wage
battle against Linux.While IBM buying SCO is possible, IBM taking up the battle
on SCO’s behalf is extremely unlikely, and can be safely discounted.
Scenario II: IBM settles with SCO Group, which moves
on to fight the rest of the Linux community.
Possible, but it would take ages and tons of resources to
fight and win so many battles. By that time, the offending code can be replaced
in Linux. Anyway, SCO would have little time left to run its Unix business.
Scenario III: SCO is right, but has pre-empted itself.
SCO has been distributing its own distribution of Linux (Caldera
Open Linux, renamed SCO Linux), and its source code.
That is—SCO Group has distributed the code that it is
claiming copyright over, under the (reuse and redistribution permitted) General
Public License. It would then come down to finding out what happened first, SCO/Caldera’s
distributing the code, or the copying. Even then, SCO Group may not be able to
proceed beyond IBM.
Reverse swing? This is a possibility that no one is talking about, at least not yet.
What if what has actually happened is that some one in SCO/Caldera
copied code from the Linux kernel into SCO Unixware? One of the reasons this
argument is being discounted is that Unixware had enterprise capabilities long
before Linux did.
But it is possible that the copying happened much later.
While Linux code changes are public and the timeline can be reconstructed with
some effort, that may not be the case with UnixWare.
What should you do? The matter is sub judice and will take time to resolve, either way. As we
have outlined, there are many, many twists to the tale, and nothing is visible
on which to predict the final outcome. Even if the SCO Group wins, it may not
affect you, because of limitations (SCO having distributed the Linux source code
themselves) or because by that time, the code would have been re-written.
If you are a CIO already running Linux, or contemplating
running Linux on your machines, there’s nothing in the lawsuit, as it stands
today, that should deter you from continuing to do so.
Krishna kumar The author is executive editor of PCQuest, part of the Cyber Media
group of Publications
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