Finally word came from Utah regarding the jury deliberations of the SCO vs Novell law suit: the jury found that Novell owns the UNIX copyrights; Novell has posted a press release on its website. Novell took a very noble approach on stopping SCO from generating income through parasitic litigation towards companies supporting the advancement of Linux. Affirming their commitment to Open Source, Novell states “Novell remains committed to promoting Linux, including by defending Linux on the intellectual property front.”
THANK YOU NOVELL!!!
How does this affects you and me? In practical terms it means that there will not be a surcharge on services and products running Linux as the operating system; you may not know how many Linux devices you’re running in your home and office; it’s found on many Internet routers, netbooks, print servers inside printers and stand-alone appliances, even advance phones have started using Android (a Linux based operating system by Google). If you have a website, it’s very likely it runs under Linux. However, this victory has moral implications as well as it shows that companies cannot appropriate the intellectual property of others and use it in a parasitic way to extort money from corporations and individuals.
Thank you P.J. at Groklaw for building the most comprehensive document repository for this case. This is their post regarding the verdict.
Now, we have to wait for the other litigations awaiting the results of this trial…