Judge junks most of SCO's complaint against DaimlerChrysler

It looks as if SCO will have to find another automaker to pick on after a judge granted the majority of DaimlerChrysler's motion to dismiss SCO's suit against it.

SCO fingered DaimlerChrysler back in March, claiming DC had failed to prove that it was in compliance with a Unix licensing agreement dating back to 1990. DaimlerChrysler later filed documents with the Circuit Court for the County of Oakland, Michigan saying it had since provided SCO with the certification. Given this evidence, Judge Rae Lee Chabot has decided to throw out SCO's complaint except on the issue as to whether or not DaimlerChrysler responded quick enough to SCO's request.

This leaves SCO in the position of hounding DaimlerChrysler about the delay or simply letting the matter go.

"We're satisfied that DaimlerChrysler did finally certify their compliance with the software agreement, but we are still interested in gaining some information on why they didn't certify within the allotted time," a SCO spokesman told CNET.

Groklaw, as always, brought the first word of the dismissal and has some rousing eyewitness accounts of SCO's day in court.

"The SCO attorneys all looked rather discomfitted by the Judge's rulings, realizing that she just gutted their case," writes one witness. "I could almost hear the screaming all the way from Utah."

The DaimlerChrysler matter is certainly the most nitpicky of all SCO's questionable claims. SCO was essentially looking for a way to trap customers who use Unix and Linux in the same shop. The idea being that a company signs a Unix license for a set number of servers but then potentially violates that license by running Linux that supposedly contains SCO's Unix IP on other servers. ®

Related stories

SCO trumps Sun's open source Solaris bid
SCO makes peace with BayStar
Software pirates stole my stealth plane
Free software guru speaks on patents
'Not the sharpest of knives' - praise heaped on Linux study author
Alien puppet Linus swiped Linux from SCO, says balanced study
SCO case doesn't slow Linux take-up