Ancient ‘Who Owns Linux?’ Case Now Has One Foot Very Deep in the Grave
owl writes:
The long legal battle over ownership of Linux is closer than ever to ending, after a panel of three judges ruled a claim against IBM and Red Hat isn't valid, and that time has expired for further action.
This story starts in 1998 when IBM decided the world needed a single version of UNIX capable of running on multiple processor architectures. To make that happen, Big Blue allied with a company called the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) which made a version of UNIX for x86 CPUs. Intel and Sequent also signed up for the multi-architecture effort, called "Project Monterey."
The alliance didn't work, largely because Linux came along and delivered a *Nix that ran on multiple processors (and introduced a new way to develop software).
IBM decided to add some of the code developed during Project Monterey to Linux, leading SCO and its legal successors to claim they owned that code and therefore had some sort of legal claim over Linux.
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