SCO flogs UNIX assets

THE ANTI-LINUX litigation outfit SCO is flogging off its software assets in a fire sale that many open sourcerors will find amusing.

In a press release SCO, which calls itself a "leading provider of UNIX software technology", said that it is selling all of the assets of its UNIX business, including "UNIX system V software products and related services".

This is funny because SCO doesn't actually own UNIX System V, as found by a jury in a US District Court trial in Utah last March. Apparently all it has is a contract with Novell to collect royalties from UNIX licencees on Novell's behalf, taking a five per cent commission for its effort.

However SCO used that contract to threaten companies that use Linux with legal extortion. It didn't work.

When SCO said it planned to send out invoices for so-called Linux 'licences', Linux users banded together and promised to sue it in every court they could find. SCO never sent out any invoices.

While the original Santa Cruz Operation started out as a UNIX vendor, a struggling Linux vendor called Caldera bought the business, changed its name to SCO, turned into a copyright troll and tried to claim that Linux was based on UNIX System V code, even though Linux is not.

SCO sued IBM and threatened to sue Linux users but never did. SCO did sue Novell, but was taken to the cleaners by Novell, which established that it never sold SCO the UNIX copyrights in question in the first place.

In a long running court battle that SCO dreamed could have placed it in a position to sue every Linux user in the land, SCO lost big time.

SCO has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy for a couple of years, and the sale of its software assets, such as they might be, is being made under Section 363 of the US Bankruptcy Code.

Ken Nielsen, CFO of the SCO Group said that the asset sale was an important step forward in ensuring business continuity for its customers.

"Our goal is to ensure continued viability for SCO, its customers, employees and the UNIX technology," said Nielsen.

There is more, a lot more, about all this at Groklaw. µ