Novell to SCO: Pay up…

It has become a satire, really. The thing between SCO and the rest of the Linux world. Not that long ago, SCO filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy after it was ruled that Novell owns the copyrights on UNIX.

Santa Cruz Operations, SCO, may soon be history, as it runs risk of running out of cash

This has been the most decisive ruling in a series of court sessions and investigations that has been going on for more than five years. SCO originally claimed that IBM would have stolen source code of their UNIX system, and put it into free operating systems such as Linux. It became pretty clear around the world that these accusations were without merit, and now the court has confirmed it.

Tales of times now past: Caldera – SCO’s former name and Linux – was a Linux flagship once. Now deemed as a defunct Linux distribution, it marks the biggest security flaw in SCO’s failed plan to collect license fees for the use of any Linux system.

With SCO now in bankruptcy mode, the company has to reorganize itself to bring it back into an profitable state. However, now Novell thinks about the situation, and comes up with the final stab in the heart of SCO: Pay up!

Novell is also trying to protect royalties SCO collects from Unix and Unixware software licensees and remits annually to the software developer. SCO is required to continue to remit between $500,000 and $800,000 annually to Novell — the next payment is due Nov. 14. SCO remitted $696,413 to Novell between the third quarter of 2006 and the second quarter of this year.

“Absent SCO’s immediate remittance of the royalties to Novell, SCO may improperly use Novell’s property to fund SCO’s bankruptcy, making Novell a forced lender of new high-risk loans to the estate,” Novell said. “This would turn Novell’s property into an involuntary gift to the estate and its creditors.”

In my opinion, Novell does the right thing to SCO, they simply have to pay (literally) for their fault, for making claims just to fill up the companies cash box, of which they knew from the start are a simple lie. Well. That’s how it goes… Novell is bringing justice to a company which outmaneuvered themselves bit by bit. So long SCO. We are sure as hell: we won’t miss you.

The Daily Herald – Novell to SCO: Pay up!