United Linux - Ending

Ending

SCO–Linux controversies
Overview
  • Timeline
  • SCO and SGI
  • SCOsource
Litigation
  • SCO v. IBM
  • SCO v. AutoZone
  • SCO v. DaimlerChrysler
  • SCO v. Novell
  • Red Hat v. SCO
Companies involved
  • SCO Group
  • IBM
  • Novell
Individuals involved
  • Ralph Yarro III
  • Pamela Jones
  • Darl McBride
Other
  • United Linux
  • USL v. BSDi
  • Caldera OpenLinux
  • Groklaw

On January 20, 2004, SCO filed a lawsuit, against Novell, the current owner of SuSE.

The end of United Linux was announced in a Novell press conference on January 22, 2004 by Richard Seibt, president of the SUSE division. The stated reason was that the SCO v. IBM lawsuit and The SCO Group's public attacks on Linux had made the alliance unworkable.

It emerged that no real work had been done on United Linux since soon after SCO v. IBM had started, and that SUSE had ceased active participation around this time. The last United Linux announcements were of Oracle Corporation support for it on 13 March 2003, and of AMD64 CPU support on 22 April 2003.

While some have reported that UnitedLinux ended, in fact the group did not gain consensus to dissolve the partnership and the legal entity remains in effect.

The SCO v. Novell complaint was amended on February 3, 2006 to add copyright infringement claims, relating to Novell's distribution of SuSE Linux. Novell responded on April 10 by filing a Request for Arbitration with the ICC, and asking that SCO's claims be stayed in the district court. They argued in the Request that through the MTA and JDC, "the UnitedLinux members agreed that each member would have an irrevocable, perpetual, and worldwide license to use and unlimitedly exploit any intellectual property rights of the other members in the UnitedLinux Software, which would be transferred to the LLC for this very purpose." Novell's motion to stay was granted in part, for those of SCO's claims relating to SuSE.

On September 14, 2007, SCO filed for bankruptcy, and on November 13, the court ruled at SCO's request that the arbitration was automatically stayed.

SuSE filed a motion to lift this stay on November 10, 2009. However, SCO objected on December 15, and SUSE's motion was denied on January 15, 2010.

Read more about this topic:  United Linux