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I thought I would drop a quick post on the fallout from SCO's loss in the courtroom that seems to have put a final nail in the coffin of their attempt to litigate their way to financial recovery.

Unless you've been living as a hermit or lost on a deserted island, you probably know that The SCO Group, Inc. (TSG, informally SCO; NASDAQ: SCOX), formerly Caldera Systems, had inherited a lawsuit against Microsoft when it purchased DR-DOS from Novell in 1996.  A settlement was reached and Microsoft made what it called "a substantial payment" to Caldera.  They seemed to have found a formula for success.

In 2002 the company changed its name to The SCO Group and shortly afterwards began claiming that Linux "contained SCO's UNIX System V source code and that Linux was an unauthorized derivative of UNIX".  They filed suit against IBM and demanded that Linux end-users pay license fees, which put the Linux world in an uproar.

Believe it or not, when faced with possible litigation many companies opted to pay SCO to ensure they were properly licensed while others waited to see how the cases (there was more than one) would pan out.  One such case was the suit brought by SCO against Novell.

Well, the outcome from this case appears to be the aforementioned nail.  There's a nice article about the ruling on Groklaw, but the key portion of the ruling from Judge Dale Kimball in the 102-page document:

The court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights

Not only does this mean that SCO doesn't "own" Linux, they also aren't the owner of one of their few software products, UnixWare.  Novell also has the right to wave and SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver of SCO's claims against IBM and Sequent.  At this moment shares in SCO can be had for 53 cents.  Who said you can't get anything for under a dollar anymore.