{"id":286174,"date":"2026-07-06T01:29:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T05:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/06\/zombie-who-owns-unix-lawsuit-comes-alive-again\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T01:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T05:55:08","slug":"zombie-who-owns-unix-lawsuit-comes-alive-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/06\/zombie-who-owns-unix-lawsuit-comes-alive-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Zombie \u2018who owns Unix?\u2019 lawsuit comes alive again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/os-platforms\/2026\/07\/06\/zombie-who-owns-unix-lawsuit-comes-alive-again-as-xinuos-argues-ibm-owes-it-big-bucks\/5266761\">Zombie \u2018who owns Unix?\u2019 lawsuit comes alive again<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/os-platforms\/2026\/07\/06\/zombie-who-owns-unix-lawsuit-comes-alive-again-as-xinuos-argues-ibm-owes-it-big-bucks\/5266761\">https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/os-platforms\/2026\/07\/06\/zombie-who-owns-unix-lawsuit-comes-alive-again-as-xinuos-argues-ibm-owes-it-big-bucks\/5266761<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-07-06 01:29:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.theregister.com\">www.theregister.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"kicker \" style=\"\">OS PLatforms<\/p>\n<p class=\"subtitle \" style=\"\">SCO&#8217;s legal successor Xinuous asks legal brains to let it bite IBM over ancient license and copyright claims<\/p>\n<p>The ancient dispute over ownership of UNIX, and perhaps Linux too, has returned to court. Again.<\/p>\n<p>As The Register has explained many, many, times since this matter first went to court in 2003, the roots of the case are the 1998 alliance between IBM and a company called the Santa Cruz Operation which sold a version of UNIX for x86 CPUs. Those two companies, plus Intel and Sequent, created \u201cProject Monterrey\u201d \u2013 an effort to create a unified version of UNIX that could run on multiple processors.<\/p>\n<p>By 2001, Project Monterrey was close to delivering a unified UNIX, an achievement made possible by blending code from IBM and SCO.<\/p>\n<p>By then, a little project called \u201cLinux\u201d already ran on multiple processors. Big Blue decided Linux was the future and bailed from Project Monterrey \u2013 then allegedly contributed some Monterrey code to the open-source project and to its own AIX and Z operating systems. SCO felt it owned some of that code, so sued IBM.<\/p>\n<p>SCO and its successors struggled to survive, but interested parties kept the lawsuit alive because the chance to emerge as owner of parts of the Linux codebase, and IBM\u2019s code, had the potential to turn into a colossal payday.<\/p>\n<p>The case and its successors ended in 2021, with a settlement that saw litigants agree to end the matter.<\/p>\n<p>But by then, SCO had sold its software to a biz called Xinuos that decided to fight on.<\/p>\n<p>The Xinuos case has burbled along quietly since, and on June 22nd reached the milestone of a hearing.<\/p>\n<p>The matter has become a little more modern, if only because this hearing was held online and the presiding judge appeared to unwittingly be on mute at one point. But the arguments otherwise seemed to revisit Project Monterrey, debated the relevance of past litigation, contested who owned what, when they owned it, and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/os-platforms\/2026\/07\/06\/zombie-who-owns-unix-lawsuit-comes-alive-again-as-xinuos-argues-ibm-owes-it-big-bucks\/5266761\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zombie \u2018who owns Unix?\u2019 lawsuit comes alive again https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/os-platforms\/2026\/07\/06\/zombie-who-owns-unix-lawsuit-comes-alive-again-as-xinuos-argues-ibm-owes-it-big-bucks\/5266761 Publish Date: 2026-07-06 01:29:00 Source Domain:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":286175,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/image.theregister.com\/231852.jpg?imageId=231852&x=0&y=0&cropw=100&croph=100&panox=0&panoy=0&panow=100&panoh=100&width=1200&height=683","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[71],"class_list":["post-286174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286174"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":286176,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286174\/revisions\/286176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}