Friday's ruling has confirmed SCO's status as a footnote in history, and we should thank the company for doing the computer industry a great service.

On Friday a judge ruled that the company doesn't own the Unix intellectual property. That Novell does own it, and that SCO should pay Novell 95 per cent of all its Unix licensing revenues.

While the first comprises the big win, the second will allow Novell to put SCO out of its misery really fast. Because as of Friday, SCO has more liabilities than it has assets. That should be enough to file for bankruptcy.

14 Aug 2007

SCO's poorly prepared attack on Linux allowed the open source world to unite, and they did so in a big way. IBM didn't budge where they could have settled, and Novell stood up to draw fire by claiming that it legally owned the Unix copyright.

Customers meanwhile left SCO in droves. As revenues fell, the firm struggled to continue its legal campaign.

Conspiracy theorists will tell you that Microsoft was ultimately behind the attack. Whether that is right or not isn't event that relevant. Either way Microsoft received a clear warning: even if Linux doesn't have a single big corporate entity as an owner, you still can't mess with the operating system.

Microsoft would be stupid to use its patent portfolio against Unix. It is limited to making the occasional vague threat.

SCO chief executive Darl McBride is left empty handed