SCO GROUP

'The SCO Group', Inc. ('TSG', informally 'SCO'; ) is a software company formerly called 'Caldera Systems' and 'Caldera International'. After acquiring the Santa Cruz Operation's Server Software and Services divisions, as well as UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, the company changed its focus to UNIX. Later on, Caldera changed its name to ''The SCO Group'' to reflect that change in focus.
It was part of the Canopy Group, but became independent after the settlement of a lawsuit between the Noorda family and a chairman of the group, Ralph Yarro, also former CEO of the Canopy Group.

Contents

History

Products

SCO-Linux lawsuits and controversies

List of recent SCO lawsuits

Timeline

2002

2005

2006

2007

References

See also

External links

Data

Charts

History

Caldera Systems, based in Utah, was founded in 1994 by Bryan Sparks[1] and Ransom Love [2], receiving start-up funding from Ray Noorda. Its main product was Caldera Network Desktop, a Linux distribution mainly targeted at business customers and containing some proprietary additions. Caldera later purchased The Linux Support Team Software GmbH and its LST Linux distribution. LST was made the basis of their following product Caldera OpenLinux.
Caldera inherited a lawsuit against Microsoft when it purchased DR-DOS from Novell in 1996. This lawsuit related to Caldera's claims of monopolization, illegal tying, exclusive dealing, and tortious interference by Microsoft. Microsoft reached an undisclosed settlement in 2000 with Caldera (which, according to Microsoft, included a substantial payment to Caldera).
Later in 2000, Caldera acquired several UNIX properties from the Santa Cruz Operation, including OpenServer and UnixWare, proprietary operating systems for PCs that would be expected to compete directly with Linux.
In 2002, Caldera joined with SuSE Linux, Turbolinux and Conectiva to form United Linux in an attempt to standardize Linux distributions. Later that year, CEO Ransom Love left the company and was replaced by Darl McBride, and the company changed its name to ''The SCO Group''.
Shortly after changing its name, SCO began to claim that Linux "contained SCO's UNIX System V source code and that Linux was an unauthorized derivative of UNIX"^[1]. SCO filed suit against IBM for an unprecedented US$1 billion and demanded that Linux end-users pay license fees. Microsoft is said to have bolstered SCO's financial situation in 2003 by purchasing a license to Unix technology and by helping to arrange funding^[2]. A new division called SCOsource was created to licence the company's intellectual property (IP). These claims provoked outrage among Linux users, who denied that Linux had copied SCO's intellectual property. Linux distributor Red Hat filed suit against SCO in Delaware. Novell, from whom SCO claimed to have acquired its Unix IP, announced that it had not sold the copyrights to SCO and that it retained them. In response, SCO sued Novell for slander of title in Utah, home state of both SCO and Novell.
Subsequently, the SCO Group sued two former customers (Autozone and Daimler-Chrysler). SCO claimed that Autozone violated SCO copyrights by using Linux. SCO claimed that Daimler-Chrysler breached its UNIX license contract by inappropriately using derivative works of UNIX and by refusing to respond to requests for certification of compliance by SCO (see SCO_v._DaimlerChrysler). SCO's suit against Daimler-Chrysler was dismissed in 2004.
After announcing its legal claims against various Linux users and vendors (see SCO-Linux controversies), the company suspended sales and development of its Linux related products. Attention was shifted to the UnixWare and OpenServer UNIX products previously acquired from the Santa Cruz Operation.

Products

★ 'SCO UnixWare', a modern UNIX operating system. UnixWare 2.x and below were direct descendants of Unix System V Release 4.2 and was originally developed by AT&T, Univel, Novell and later on The Santa Cruz Operation. UnixWare 7 was sold as a "best of breed" UNIX OS combining UnixWare 2 and OpenServer 5 and was based on System V Release 5. UnixWare 7.1.2 was branded OpenUNIX 8, but later releases returned to the UnixWare 7.1.x name and version numbering.

★ 'SCO OpenServer', another UNIX operating system, which was originally developed by The Santa Cruz Operation. SCO OpenServer 5 was a descendant of SCO UNIX, which is in turn a descendent of XENIX. OpenServer 6 is, in fact, an OpenServer compatibility environment running on a modern SVR5 based UNIX kernel.

★ 'Smallfoot', an operating system and GUI created specifically for point of sale applications.

★ 'SCOx Web Services Substrate', a web services-based framework for modernizing legacy applications.

★ 'WebFace', a development environment for rich-UI browser-based Internet applications.

★ 'SCOoffice Server', an e-mail and collaboration solution, based on a mixture of open-source and closed-source software.

★ 'Caldera WebSpyder', a web browser for DOS. Code from Arachne was bought and used.

★ In late 2004, SCO announced the launch of the SCO Marketplace Initiative [3], in which it offers pay-per-project development opportunities.

★ In early 2006, SCO publicly released 'Me, Inc', a mobile services platform. [4]

SCO-Linux lawsuits and controversies

Main articles: SCO-Linux controversies

The SCO Group is currently involved in a dispute with various Linux vendors and users. In this campaign SCO "announced that Linux contained SCO's UNIX System V source code and that Linux was an unauthorized derivative of UNIX".¹ Although many are skeptical about their claims, SCO initiated a series of lawsuits and claims that, if upheld by the courts, may impact the future of both Linux and Unix. While making numerous public assertions that Linux infringes upon their copyrights, the lawsuits themselves concern contractual issues which are tangential to the issue of whether or not Linux infringes any copyrights. Further complicating the issue is the legitimacy of SCO claims concerning the ownership of System V Release 4.0 (SVR4) Unix copyrights. The success or failure of the claims will also have a profound effect on the financial future of The SCO Group, itself. SCO has, to date, made little headway in this dispute. In particular, in February 2005, Judge Dale Kimball, the judge in the ''SCO v. IBM'' case has stated;^[3]
On August 10 2007, Judge Kimball, hearing the SCO v. Novell case, ruled that "...the court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights". Novell was awarded summary judgments on a number of claims, and a number of SCO claims were denied. SCO was instructed to account for and pass to Novell an appropriate portion of income relating to SCOSource licences to Sun Microsystems and Microsoft. A number of matters are not disposed of by Judge Kimball's ruling, and the outcome of these are still pending.^[4]

List of recent SCO lawsuits

★ ''SCO v. IBM''.

★ ''Red Hat v. SCO''.

★ ''SCO v. Novell''.

★ ''SCO v. AutoZone''.

★ ''SCO v. DaimlerChrysler''.

Timeline

2002

On June 28, 2002 Darl McBride became the CEO of SCO; soon thereafter the company pursued litigation against IBM and Linux. McBride accused Linux of containing "line-by-line" copies of SCO's proprietary source code.

2005

On February 17 the SCO Group issued a press release that stated their stock may soon be delisted from the NASDAQ stock exchange for failing to issue an annual 10-K report in a timely manner as required by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regulations. [6] In late April of 2005, after complying with the filing requirements, the NASDAQ switched trading of the SCO Group from "SCOXE" (which denotes a listing which may be delisted soon) back to their original "SCOX" stock symbol.
On July 1, federal Judge Dale A. Kimball denied The SCO Group's motion to amend their claim against IBM yet another time (a 3rd amended complaint) and include new claims regarding Monterey on the PowerPC architecture. In the same decision, the five-week jury trial date was set for February 2007.^[5]
On July 14, Groklaw obtained an email ^[6] from Michael Davidson to SCO Group senior vice president Reginald Broughton sent on August 13, 2002. In it, Davidson describes the The Santa Cruz Operation's own investigation into whether or not Linux contained proprietary UNIX source code. "At the end, we had found absolutely
★ nothing
★ . ie no evidence of any copyright infringement whatsoever," Davidson concluded. At which time SCO presented as evidence an e-mail from a Robert Swartz, a consultant hired by SCO to compare UNIX and Linux source files, that copyright infringement could exist.

2006

On November 29 and December 1, two critical decisions were released. In the first, Judge Dale A. Kimball affirmed Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells' June 28, 2006 Order [7] striking most of SCO's claimed evidence of code misuse as being too vague to be worth adjudicating. In the second, Wells ruled from the bench in accepting IBM's motion to limit SCO's claims to those supported by evidence submitted by December 22, 2005 and not rejected by the court ^[7]. SCO stock subsequently lost roughly 50% of its value in three days of exceptionally heavy trading.^[8]

2007

On April 23, SCO received a second delisting notice from NASDAQ. This was triggered by the active bid price of company stock, at closing, being less than $1 for 30 consecutive trading days. To regain compliance with continued listing requirements, the company must maintain a closing bid price greater than or equal to $1 for at least 10 trading days. ^[9] The stock regained compliance on June 12, 2007.^[10]
On August 10, Judge Dale Kimball issued a ruling in ''SCO v. Novell'' that "Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights." In this ruling SCO was found to be in breach of its SVRX licensing agreement with Novell.^[11]
This ruling also cast further doubt on SCO's claims that IBM and Linux infringe against any SCO source code, and upheld Novell's right to force SCO to waive its copyright claims against IBM and Sequent.
In response, on Monday, August 13, SCO stock () fell over 70%, to 44 cents a share.^[12]

References

1. SCO Registers UNIX® Copyrights and Offers UNIX License
2. SCO lawsuit against Linux financed by Microsoft
3. ''The SCO Group, Inc. vs. International Business Machines, Inc.'' case number 2:03cv0294 United States District Court for the District of Utah doc #398 [5]
4. MEMORANDUM DECISION AND ORDER Civil Case No. 2:04CV139DAK
5. IBM Wins Big - SCO Motion to Amend Complaint Denied; Trial Date Set
6. The Michael Davidson Email/Swartz Memo - SCO v. IBM (3 updates)
7. First Word from the Hearing: It's IBM All the Way
8. Historical Prices for SCOX
9. Form 8K: Item 3.01 Notice of Delisting or Failure to Satisfy a Continued Listing Rule or Standard; Transfer of Listing.
10. Form 8K: Item 8.01 Other Events.
11. SCO never owned UNIX copyrights, owes Novell 95 percent of UNIX royalties Ars Technica, 2007-08-13.
12. Investors bailing on SCO stock, SCOX plummets Ars Technica, 2007-08-14.

See also

★ Groklaw

External links

★ The SCO Group, Inc.

★ SCO IP site

★ Groklaw | News and Commentary about SCO lawsuits and Other Related Legal Information

Data

★ Financial information for The SCO Group (SCOX)

★ Yahoo! - The SCO Group, Inc. Company Profile

Charts

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