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Intellectual Property Law

: Groklaw

Darl's 2003 Letter to Questar: Proof SCOsource was about ATandT's System V, not UnixWare

By Pamela Jones et al.

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On April 29, day one of the SCO/Novell trial in Utah, one of the main issues addressed was whether SCOsource was about Unix System V or, as SCO has recently started claiming, about UnixWare. SCO's position is that they are one and the same. There were questions posed to Chris Sontag about the SCOsource license that Questar bought back in 2003.

But earlier, there was an exhibit attached to Novell's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment on its 4th Claim for Relief, namely Exhibit 7 [PDF], a May 12, 2003 letter from CEO Darl McBride to Questar CEO Keith Rattie. We never had time to do it as text back in December when it was filed, but I have time now, especially now that we see it matters, and it so, so clearly shows that back in 2003, SCOsource absolutely was about Unix System V, the original AT&T code "licensed by AT&T to approximately 6,000 companies and institutions worldwide", as SCO describes it in the letter, and not UnixWare, which isn't mentioned at all and couldn't be described that way. So here is the letter as text, for the record, and happily the judge has this exhibit in hand.

It's so funny, after the August 10th Utah decision that informed SCO it doesn't own the copyrights to Unix it claimed, to read McBride's description of proprietary software as carefully built in a process "designed to monitor the security and ownership of intellectual property rights associated with the code." He contrasts Linux as being a kind of anonymous free for all, with no one caring about who owns what. How hilarious that in fact the court ruled that is was proprietary SCO who didn't know who owned the UNIX code. So much for carefully monitoring IP ownership rights. As for security, I give you Microsoft's record in that department. Exhibit A.

Full post as published by Groklaw on May 12, 2008 (boomark / email).