SCO announced this morning that a paralegal had uncovered a document,
Amendment No. 2 to the Asset Purchase Agreement dated October 16, 1996
that SCO claims clarifies that the Asset Purchase Agreement between
Novell and SCO dated September 19, 1995 did indeed give them "all
rights to the UNIX and UnixWare technology, including the copyrights,
were transferred to SCO."
Darl McBride, SCO CEO, summed it up as, "SCO is the only rightful
owner of System V and all copyrights."
Novell agrees that, while unable to find a copy of the document
themselves, the amendment looks legitimate and "appears to support
SCO's claim that ownership of certain copyrights for UNIX did transfer
to SCO in 1996." Novell continues on though that, "the amendment does
not address ownership of patents, however, which clearly remain with
Novell."
On the other hand, McBride during the June 6th teleconference implied
that he doesn't know if the copyrights were ever registered with the
Copyright Office. Chris Sontag, senior VP of SCOsource said that that
didn't matter and that the copyrights would be registered if necessary
in the future.
As for Novell, far from beating retreat, "Novell reiterates its
request to SCO to address the fundamental issue Novell raised in its
May 28 letter: SCO's still unsubstantiated claims against the Linux
community.
One non-technical analyst, Laura Dido of the Yankee Group, who has
signed SCO's
non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to see the source code has
said that the Unix and Linux source code samples selected and supplied
by SCO do look identical. She recommends
that companies with IBM AIX contracts talk with IBM about
what they should do next. Many analysts and technology journalists
have refused to sign the NDA since it would impede them in reporting
on SCO's claims.
One important question, which source code alone can't answer, remains
unanswered, though. Even if Unix code was illegally placed in Linux,
who put it there?
Looking ahead, McBride said that if IBM does not settle with SCO by
June 13 over its claims that Unix code was improperly introduced into
AIX and Linux, SCO will revoke IBM's AIX license on the 16th. He did
not say what, if any, action SCO would take against companies
continuing to use AIX.
At the same time, McBride hinted broadly that SCO would welcome an out
of court settlement or a buy out saying, "We're having discussions
with large players and we'd welcome any proposal to resolve the
issue."
