Like IBM’s AIX
license before it, SCO Group Wednesday said it
delivered final written notice of the termination of Sequent Computer
Systems’ UNIX System V software contract Tuesday.
Sequent is a subsidiary of IBM . SCO said it terminated
Sequent’s contract due to improper transfer of the company’s source code
and development methods into Linux. The company said IBM no longer has the
right to use or license Dynix/ptx, Sequent’s Unix.
For its part, IBM, while it denies that SCO has shown any evidence that it has violated its agreements, said the point is entirely moot, because Dynix is not on the market.
“SCO has not shown us any evidence that we’ve violated our agreements in any way,” IBM spokesperson Trink Guarino told internetnews.com. “IBM withdrew Dynix/PTX and associated NUMA hardware systems from the market long ago, long before this suit was filed.”
SCO said Sequent’s contract had allowed it to prepare derivative works and
modifications of System V software “provided the resulting materials were
treated as part of the Original [System V] software.”
But SCO claims IBM contributed about 148 files of direct Sequent Unix code
to the Linux 2.4 and 2.5 kernels, about 168,276 lines of code. SCO said
this code was critical to the NUMA and RCU multi-processor code.