Overview#
A little
History on
UNIX
A summary of Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX) was:
- 1969 - originally developed by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs
- 1993 - Novell INC bought Unix System Laboratories from AT&T giving them rights to the Unix operating system
- 1993 - Novell INC transferred the UNIX trademark and certification rights to the X/Open Consortium.
- 1995 - Novell INC sold existing UNIX licenses, plus rights to further develop the System V code base to the Santa Cruz Operation
- 1996 - X/Open merged with OSF, creating The Open Group. (They define what is and what is not a "UNIX" operating system)
- 2000 - SCO sold its entire UNIX business and assets to Caldera Systems
- 2003 - The SCO Group started legal action against various users and vendors of Linux; Novell INC disputed the SCO Group's claim to hold copyright on the UNIX source base
- 2007 - a major portion of the case (the fact that Novell INC had the copyright to UNIX, and that the SCO Group had improperly kept money that was due to Novell INC)
- 2009 - SCO successfully got the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn this decision which sent the lawsuit back to the courts
- 2010 - SCO Group's case against Novell INC for slander of title was heard by a jury in Utah, which unanimously ruled in favor of Novell INC
A little history on
Darl McBride
- 1959 - Born
- 1988 - was a manager at Novell INC,
- 1996 - Vice President of IKON Office Solutions.
- 1998 - IKON fired him after his involvement in the execution of 33 business acquisitions
- 1998 - Sued IKON for $10 million, claiming breach of contract, nonpayment of wages, and fraud. IKON counter-sued, and the case was eventually settled.
- 2002 - Became the CEO of SCO
- 2003 - The SCO Group, during McBride's tenure as CEO, initiated litigation (SCO v. IBM)
- 2009 - McBride was terminated as Chief Executive Officer and President of The SCO Group
Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) was a software company based in Santa Cruz, California which was best known for selling three
UNIX variants for
Intel x86 processors
- 1979 - founded by Doug Michels and his father Larry Michels as a UNIX porting and consulting company. The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. was incorporated in January, 1979.
- 1993 - SCO acquired two smaller companies and developed the product line that was named Tarantella.
- 1993 - went public on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange.
- 1995 - Novell INC sold existing UNIX licenses, plus rights to further develop the System V code base to the Santa Cruz Operation
- 2000 - SCO sold its entire UNIX business and assets to Caldera Systems
- 2001 - SCO sold its rights to Unix and the related divisions to Caldera Systems the corporation retained only its Tarantella product line, and changed its name to Tarantella, Inc.
- 2005 - Tarantella, Inc. was purchased by Sun Microsystems for $25,000,000 (USD).
The SCO Group, Inc. (TSG)#
A brief history of The SCO Group, Inc. (TSG, informally but improperly referred to as SCO; Pink Sheets: SCOXQ) as it relates to the
UNIX controversy:
- 1994 - founded by Bryan Sparks and Ransom Love receiving start-up funding the Canopy Group which was owned by the Ray Noorda Family
- 1996 - purchased DR-DOS from Novell and inherited the lawsuit related to Novell's claims of monopolization, illegal tying, exclusive dealing, and tortious interference by Microsoft.
- 1997 - Spun off the thin client and embedded systems as Caldera Thin Clients which was renamed in 1998, to Lineo where President and CEO of Lineo was Bryan Sparks, the original founder of Caldera Systems.
- 2000 - Microsoft reached an undisclosed settlement with Caldera, which, according to Microsoft, included a substantial payment to Caldera
- 2000 - Caldera acquired several UNIX properties from the Santa Cruz Operation, including OpenServer and UnixWare, proprietary operating systems for PCs that would be expected to compete directly with Linux.
- 2002 - Caldera joined with SUSE Linux, Turbolinux and Conectiva to form United Linux in an attempt to standardize Linux distributions.
- 2002 - CEO Ransom Love left the company and was replaced by Darl McBride, and the company changed its name to The SCO Group.
- 2002 - SCO began to claim that Linux "contained SCO's UNIX System V source code and that Linux was an unauthorized derivative of UNIX". SCO filed suit against IBM for an unprecedented US$1 billion and demanded that Linux end-users pay license fees.
- 2003 - Microsoft bolstered SCO's financial situation by purchasing a license to UNIX technology and by helping to arrange funding.
- 2003 - Red Hat filed suit against SCO in Delaware.
- 2003 - Novell, from whom SCO claimed to have acquired its UNIX IP, announced that it had not sold the copyrights to SCO and that it retained them. In response, SCO sued Novell for slander of title in Utah, home state of both SCO and Novell.
- 2003 - SCO Group sued former customer Daimler-Chrysler
- 2004 - SCO Group sued former customer AutoZone claimming AutoZone violated SCO copyrights by using Linux
- 2004 - Judge Robinson denied SCO's motion to dismiss and she stayed the lawsuit pending the resolution of the SCO v. IBM lawsuit
- 2004 - SCO's suit against Daimler-Chrysler was dismissed.
- 2007 - a major portion of the case (the fact that Novell had the copyright to UNIX, and that the SCO Group had improperly kept money that was due to Novell)
- 2007 - SCO received NASDAQ desisting notice and trading was suspended
- 2007 - voluntary petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code
- 2009 - McBride was terminated as Chief Executive Officer and President of The SCO Group.
- 2009 - SCO successfully got the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn this decision which sent the lawsuit back to the courts
- 2010 - SCO Group's case against Novell for slander of title was heard by a jury in Utah, which unanimously ruled in favor of Novell
More Information#
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