The SCO case is constantly taking new twists and turns. Most recently, Novell has gone on the offensive against SCO and in IBM's defense, arguing that SCO has never owned the Unix System V copyrights, but distributes the software under license from Novell, who retains copyrights. One of Novell's terms in their asset sale agreement is that SCO must amend its user licenses at the discretion of Novell. Novell has therefore directed SCO to waive all requirements of confidentiality on the Unix source code, thereby obliterating their case against anyone:

'Accordingly, pursuant to Section 4.16(b) of the Asset Purchase Agreement, Novell, on behalf of The SCO Group, hereby waives any purported right SCO may claim to require Sequent (or IBM as its successor) to treat Sequent Code as subject to the confidentiality obligations or use restrictions of Sequent's SVRX license.' [GROKLAW]

Grocklaw also quotes the Asset Purchase Agreement between Novell and SCO, which says the following:

(b) Buyer shall not, and shall not have the authority to, amend, modify or waive any right under or assign any SVRX License without the prior written consent of Seller. In addition, at Seller's sole discretion and direction, Buyer shall amend, supplement, modify or waive any rights under, or shall assign any rights to, any SVRX License to the extent so directed in any manner or respect by Seller. In the event that Buyer shall fail to take any such action concerning the SVRX Licenses as required herein, Seller shall be authorized, and hereby is granted, the rights to take any action on Buyer's own behalf. Buyer shall not, and shall have no right to, enter into future licenses or amendments of the SVRX Licenses, except as may be incidentally involved through its rights to sell and license the Assets or the Merged Product (as such term is defined in the proposed Operating Agreement, attached hereto as Exhibit 5.1(c)) or future versions thereof of the Merged Product.

Meanwhile, IBM is running the slickest Linux ad campaign ever. The Open Source Software model will emerge victorious from this fray, and stronger than ever, especially with Unix source made public. I hope this is the beginning of the end of restrictive proprietary software licenses.