| Why did Microsoft and Sun support SCO? |
Jun. 05, 2007
Back in the beginning of SCO's all-out assault on Linux and IBM, the Unix company received a much needed financial boost to its lawsuit plans with two major contracts. These deals with Microsoft and Sun brought SCO $26.5 million. This money, in turn, fueled SCO's lawsuits.
At the time, many critics of SCO wondered what in the world Sun and Microsoft could have been buying from SCO. Most people thought the answer was that they were buying an attack on a rival company, IBM, and a rival operating system, Linux.
Now, as a byproduct of SCO v. Novell -- the case over who really owns Unix's IP (intellectual property) -- and thanks to Groklaw, we now know what Sun was buying from SCO (PDF download). In part, it does seem to be an attack on Linux; but that wasn't all.
According to the court exhibit, Sun bought a "right to use license" (RTU license) for its commercial Linux end-users. In addition, Sun was buying "a UnixWare source code license to developers," and both licenses "contained a covenant not to sue, which provided that the licensee would not be exposed to liability for the use of SCO's intellectual property in Linux."
Nowhere does the exhibit explain in any detail exactly what SCO IP was hidden within Linux. Does that sound to you like the sort of vague patent claims made by Microsoft in regards to its recent patent deals with Novell and with Xandros? It does to me.
What makes this even odder is that, according to the exhibit, Microsoft and Sun also paid for UnixWare rights, and incidental rights to the older UNIX System V source code. Since they had paid for the rights to use Unix, why should they also be paying SCO not to sue them for the use of Linux?
My conclusion, then, as now, is that both companies were paying for SCO to attack IBM and Linux. It's difficult for me to see it in any other light. Both companies, after all, already had licenses to use SCO's Unix and IP.
In addition, though, this document supports the contention by Jonathan Schwartz -- then Sun VP of software and today Sun's president and CEO -- in an 2003 eWEEK interview that Sun had bought "rights equivalent to ownership" of Unix.
SCO agreed. In 2005, SCO CEO Darl McBride said that SCO had no problem with Sun open-sourcing Unix code in what would become OpenSolaris. "We have seen what Sun plans to do with OpenSolaris and we have no problem with it," McBride said. "What they're doing protects our Unix intellectual property rights."
To sum up, Sun was buying both an attack on Linux and the Unix rights it felt it needed in order to "own" the Unix IP within Solaris. Perhaps, even in 2003, Sun was considering open-sourcing Solaris, but that seems unlikely to me. Sun at that time was focused on what would prove to be the last gasp of creating a popular proprietary operating system platform: Java Enterprise System.
Of course, if the court rules that Novell, and not SCO, owns Unix's IP, then Sun may face a very interesting time negotiating with Novell over the rights to OpenSolaris. At the same time, this suggests another interesting possibility regarding Novell's patent deal with Microsoft. After all, Microsoft did pay Novell $108 million for patent rights. Could Microsoft have been paying for rights that concern Unix?
As one mystery is being cleared up, another one unfolds.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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