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Groklaw's Pamela Jones On The SCO Decision

By now, everyone knows that the upcoming SCO vs. Novell trial is mostly moot, because Judge Dale Kimball has ruled that Novell owns the Unix copyrights. While the decision marks a welcome end to the three-year-long legal saga, it spotlights the wimpy nature of pundits and many in the computer industry, who cowered on the sidelines, fearful of recommending or adopting Linux while the litigation proceeded, lest SCO sue them, too.

The most notable case in point was Gartner's 2003 recommendation that companies delay or take a go-slow approach to Linux "until the merits of SCO's claims or any resulting judgments become clear."

That "advice" was picked up and reinforced by the computer-press echo chamber, and became accepted thinking for much longer than it should have.

It's true that, from a business perspective, Gartner's advice seemed pretty reasonable. After all, a CIO can't put his company at risk of being sued.

However, looking at the situation like a normal person, it's disgusting to see how a company with what was widely viewed as a bogus claim was able to bludgeon much of the computer industry into submission for three years. SCO's suits were and are (there's still SCO vs. IBM, which will likely be tossed soon as a result of Kimball's ruling) the upscale equivalent of the man who sued a drycleaner for $67 million because they lost a $10 pair of pants. (The suit was thrown out.)

To me, the interesting thing about Friday's SCO decision is not that Novell won. At this point, that was expected and so it's pretty much anticlimactic. What no one has commented on is that fact that the air seems to have quietly exited SCO's balloon about a year and a half ago. That is, the fear factor I spoke of above, while real in 2003 and '04, was pretty much gone by early last year.

Thus, the SCO decision means little. (Of course, it would have meant a whole heck of a lot if the case had gone to trial, or if there'd been a summary ruling the other way.)

What matters now is the activity surrounding Microsoft's dealings with Novell. Basically, Microsoft gave Novell a bunch of money, agreed not to sue its customers, and said it would resell SUSE.

What did Microsoft get? Many observers believe it has embarked on what amounts to a savvy divide-and-conquer strategy, in which it's smartly beginning to do business with Linux users from inside the walls of the open-source community, rather than as an outsider. (If you don't think there's a small grain of truth to that take, ask yourself why so many open-source purists hate the deal and have attacked Novell for sleeping with the enemy.)

In the aftermath of the SCO-Novell decision, I contacted Pamela Jones (aka "PJ") of Groklaw, which has been the premier online resource on the SCO litigation, and also is an open-source advocacy site. I asked her about my "punctured balloon" theory, as well as her opinion of the implications of the Microsoft/Novell pact. Here's what she e-mailed me back:

"If there is one thing I've observed from the SCO saga, it's that pundits are always behind the curve and rarely get anything right.

Most normal people see the Microsoft patent threats as phase two of the
same campaign, SCO being phase one.

I don't think anyone admires Microsoft for either, nor do they expect phase two to be any more successful than phase one was. Microsoft should probably just move on, maybe try to get customers by creating products people want to use. All they accomplished with phase one is now people know that Linux is the cleanest code on Planet Earth, that no one stole anything from anybody and never would.

As for people being scared and then not ... it depends. Don't forget that in discovery, we found out that some companies SCO went to visit told them to come back after they'd won in court, if they did. Had they won, the whole nonsense could have started up again."

P.S. You can read all about the SCO-Novell decision here and here. (Groklaw also has posted the complete, 102-page PDF of the court's ruling here. With the most important stuff already decided, the upcoming trial will address the remaining issues of Novell's slander counter-claim against Novell, as well as how much money SCO owes Novell.)

[Update: The post was updated Sunday at noon, to correct references to the upcoming trial.]

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