A Victory for Open-Source Software

The New York Times reports a decision in SCO v. Novell. Judge Dale A. Kimball ruled on August 10 that Novell is the "rightful owner of the copyrights covering the Unix operating system." According to Judge Kimball, Novell could make SCO abandon its claims against the I.B.M. Corporation. SCO had claimed that "I.B.M. had violated a contract by copying code from the Unix operating system to Linux, an open-source operating system that is distributed free and that I.B.M. uses on some of its computers." According to the Times, the decision "could remove the cloud over open-source software like Linux, an operating system loosely modeled on the proprietary Unix. The unresolved ownership has been seen as a limiting factor in the willingness of computing managers for businesses large and small to adopt open-source software, which can be adapted freely by software developers and can be legally shared or modified by end users." Even before the decision came down, I.B.M. and Novell had announced plans to "join forces to capture a larger piece of the growing open source application server market," according to a press release issued on August 7.

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