I did a detailed comment a while back summarizing the issues and the convoluted history of this case (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1230340 http://new

I did a detailed comment a while back summarizing the issues and the convoluted history of this case (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1230340 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1230340). In 1996, Novell sold UNIX-related rights to SCO but specifically excluded all copyrights and all patents from that sale - meaning that Novell continued to own all such rights. Less than a year later, though, the parties did an amendment that described what Novell was holding back as follows: "All copyrights and trademarks, except for the copyrights and trademarks owned by Novell as of the date of the Agreement required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies." The wildly ambiguous language here ("except for the copyrights . . . required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies") - together with SCO's greed and venality - is what spawned years of wasteful litigation. Weak as its claims were, SCO was able to use "rights" it claimed from this language to derive equally weak claims that its supposed rights were being violated by this or that trivial element within Linux so as to constitute copyright infringement. This final judgment in a key trial, then, is a tremendous outcome for the open source community. It kills all cases at their root by imposing a definitive judgment that SCO acquired no UNIX copyrights of any kind and, without that, its foundation for mounting assaults against Linux and the rest is completely undone (without regard to what details of Linux are alleged to infringe). Two caveats: 1. Apart from SCO's dire financial condition, there would be nothing preventing it from appealing and continuing the mess on the multi-pronged fronts on which it has been fought. SCO (in its current form) is essentially an investor-backed operation that sought in recent years primarily to capitalize on this series of lawsuits and it could theoretically continue to do so if the investors had the appetite to continue funding the mess. It is widely believed that this is now a venture that is spent, however, and let us hope this is true. 2. This matter is now safe as long as Novell or some other trusted party continues to hold the UNIX copyrights. But Novell itself is in trouble and its assets may soon be acquired by private equity firms who might in turn sell such assets to trolls (see http://url4.eu/3p37m http://url4.eu/3p37m). Again, let's hope not. That said, this victory does appear to be complete and is cause for celebration.