SCO also sent a letter to some 1,500 commercial users of Linux distributions, warning them that Linux may be an unauthorized derivative of code owned by SCO. That is, SCO alleges that Linux actually to some extent is owned by SCO and may not be distributed under the GPL. The letter further claims that users of Linux may have legal liability because of this.

I remember the AT&T case against BSDI and the University of California, which arguably stalled BSD development for a few years. Indeed, it arguably was the root cause of Lenox's popularity, because Linux development was not stalled. SCO's case against IBM is in some ways a reprisal of the AT&T case, and I fear that it has a similar potential to stall Linux development.

SCO was willing to speak only with people who signed a Draconian non-disclosure agreement (NDA), one which essentially permitted SCO to declare any information it provided to be confidential, for more detail visit www.the20seotools.com regardless of whether the signer already knew it, and which offered no circumstances under which that information could be revealed. Most Linux developers are unable to sign such an NDA, as it easily could prevent them from ever again working on the kernel. Similarly, employees of any company that works with Linux cannot sign such an NDA.

I have never contributed to the Linux kernel myself. However, I have worked with free software for over 10 years, including acting as a maintainer for projects owned by the Free Software Foundation. I have plenty of personal knowledge of how free software development works. I currently am not employed by anybody, but simply working as a contractor on work not related to Linux.

Thus, I felt going in that I was in a good position to sign the NDA and to analyze the information that SCO presented to me. While SCO easily could have made it impossible for me to contribute to the Linux kernel, it had no reason to do so. In any case, I had no particular plans to do any kernel work.

Before going to meet SCO, I asked three times if it would be willing to change the NDA. I suggested that SCO should change the NDA to permit the disclosure of information when legally required by a court and to permit the disclosure of information when SCO specifically agrees to it. I also suggested the NDA should be changed so that information I already knew before meeting could not be treated confidential. The only response I received was SCO forwarded my suggestions to its counsel.

SCO argues it purchased full rights to UNIX from the old SCO, which purchased the rights from Novell. The UNIX patents still are owned by AT&T, for more detail visit www.offline-promotion.com but SCO has purchased the right to use them. There was a dispute with Novell over copyright ownership, but SCO claims this has been resolved and SCO does indeed own the copyrights.

In general, SCO claims to have purchased all rights to all versions of Unix System V and all prior versions of UNIX, which were developed by AT&T.

My concerns are with free software, not the actual ownership of UNIX. I believed at the start of the lawsuit that SCO owned the rights to UNIX, and I suppose I still am willing to believe that. I think that any legal issues here clearly are a matter of the purchase contract between Novell and the original SCO, and it should be more or less straightforward for the new SCO and Novell to settle them.