Stories about: V Source

Novell has fired back strongly against an amended complaint filed by The SCO Group in its slander of title lawsuit against Novell, rejecting SCO claims that it holds the copyright on Unix and demanding a jury trial.

The SCO Group's slander lawsuit against Novell is now set to enter the discovery phase after Novell's attempts to again halt proceedings failed. The judge in the bitter legal battle denied Novell's second motion to dismiss the case late Monday.

With its cash reserves dwindling and losses continuing to mount, The SCO Group is taking measures to cut its expenses and ensure it will have enough cash to process its lawsuit with IBM, the company announced during its quarterly earnings conference call Tuesday. SCO reported a loss of US$7.4 million on revenue of US$11.2 million for the third quarter - a loss that was affected by the US$7.2 million in legal expenses the company incurred during the quarter, which ended July 31.

The SCO Group is trying to revive the name of the AT&T subsidiary that once owned the rights to the Unix operating system and, in the process, stirring up controversy with the industry group that claims ownership of the Unix trademark.

The SCO Group late last week submitted written arguments explaining why a Utah judge should not issue a summary judgment dismissing its multibillion-dollar lawsuit against IBM.

After reviewing Unix source code provided by IBM, The SCO Group appears to be experiencing difficulties in identifying the specific lines of code that it alleges IBM improperly contributed to the Linux operating system, according to court documents filed in a federal court last month.

A large retail trade association believes that The SCO Group Inc.'s claim that it owns some of the intellectual property within the Linux operating system is "unfounded," according to a statement it released Wednesday.

The SCO Group Inc. has taken its fight with the Linux community to Capitol Hill. Earlier this month, the company sent the 535 members of the U.S. Congress a letter that called Linux and open source software a threat to the security and economy of the U.S., SCO confirmed on Thursday.

The SCO Group is now making its Intellectual Property License for Linux available to small and medium businesses, the company said on Wednesday.

Novell is re-asserting the claim that it, and not The SCO Group, owns the copyright to the Unix System V source code that has been at the heart of a protracted dispute between SCO and the Linux community. On Monday, the vendor confirmed that it has been quietly registering copyright for some of the same Unix System V code that SCO registered copyright for earlier in the year.

At the AUUG 2003 conference in September, LinuxWorld caught up with Greg Lehey for a chat about his work on the FreeBSD operating system, thoughts on open source software, his role as AUUG president, his French bassoon, and lots of stuff in between. He spoke with Howard Dahdah.