Ancient ‘Who owns Linux?’ case now has one foot very deep in the grave
Appeals court upholds decision the case is dead, but Xinuos is trying for a long-shot re-hearing..
Appeals court upholds decision the case is dead, but Xinuos is trying for a long-shot re-hearing.
The short version
- 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).
What happened
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. That’s quite a potential prize given that Linux runs in billions of devices.
Why it matters
To understand why, consider that Huawei owns patents that earn it $0.50 for every device that uses its Wi-Fi 7 IP.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at The Register — Networks via the links above and below.