Microsoft buys SCO Unix licence

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 19 May 2003 at 18:04

IP-wielding SCO has found a friendly ear with Microsoft, as it upsets the Linux community.

Microsoft has obligingly agreed to license SCO's Unix patents and source code that lies at the heart of SCO's $1bn suit against IBM.

Brad Smith, general counsel for Microsoft said that 'the announcement of this license is representative of Microsoft's ongoing commitment to respecting intellectual property (IP) and the IT community's healthy exchange of IP through licensing.'

He added: 'This helps to ensure IP compliance across Microsoft solutions and supports our efforts around existing products like Services for Unix that further Unix interoperability.'

The good people at Microsoft are putting their weight behind SCO's claims that Unix code has been misappropriated into the Linux kernel. And who can blame them? Buoying SCO's case with a heavyweight name should help give a painful twist to the knife SCO is jabbing at Microsoft's fast-growing competitor in the enterprise sector. Especially with Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 rolling out the doors.

Interestingly, a quick search on Microsoft's site for SCO, turns up a strange parallel from November 1997. At that time it appears the European Commission dismissed a complaint from SCO, saying that Microsoft should be able to receive royalty payments if Microsoft's Unix code is used in SCO's Unix products.

The Unix code developed in 1987 by Microsoft was done so under contract to AT&T, and for the purpose of creating an Intel-compatible version of Unix that was also compatible with Microsoft's XENIX operating system - at the time 'the most popular version of UNIX on any hardware platform'.

There were contractual obligations to make future versions of Unix compatible with this new one, and for AT&T to pay Microsoft a set royalty on its sales. These obligations were passed up through the history and Unix's previous owners - through Novell and up to SCO in the present day.

The outcome of SCO's complaint was that Microsoft agreed to set aside the obligations that future versions of Unix were to be compatible with the one it had come up with, but that code from that version found in SCO's Unix would obligate the company to pay Microsoft royalties.

So perhaps Microsoft has more to gain in licensing SCO's Unix than just adding to the undermining of confidence in Linux.

Neither Microsoft or SCO had returned requests for comment at the time of going to press.

You can read the release yourself on the Microsoft Web site.