The SCO Group frightened potential business users away from Linux with lawsuits demanding billions in royalties. But the litigious company's claims were shot down in a ruling that will likely boost uptake of the operating system.

Last Friday the court concluded that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyright, today SCO stock went from $1.56 down to $0.44!

SCO has filed a Memorandum in Opposition to Novell's Evidentiary Objections with exhibits. It's all under seal, but it will help us understand a couple of things.

SCO was predicting that revenues from its SCOsource licences for Linux would generate billions of dollars for the company, chief executive Darl McBride testified in a deposition on 27 March 2007.

Chris Brown just got home from the hearing in SCO v. Novell, and he says it went well. His longer report will come after he can type it up, but as expected the judge took it under advisement. No. Boies didn't argue for SCO. Chris:

Here's the new schedule for oral argument on the various summary judgment motions in SCO v. Novell. Someone woke up realizing that there is no way to cover so many motions in one day, so now there is a two-day schedule. If you are thinking of attending, be aware that this is a corrected schedule, as the time on May 31st is now 2 PM, not 9 AM.

For many years the IT industry presumed that Santa Cruz Operation was the sole and rightful owner of the original Unix. Unix, of course was developed originally at AT&T and spun off into their USL division, which was later sold to Novell. In 1995 there was the sale of Unix assets to Santa Cruz Operation. It was widely assumed that all enforceable copyrights followed that sale. We now know that is apparently not so.

Most of you probably remember the delisting trouble SCO got into because they failed to timely file their 10-K back in 2005. The same story will show up again soon, but this time for another reason: the stock price is too low to meet Nasdaq's requirements.