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Yesterday a jury returned its verdict in the seven-year legal battle between SCO Group and Novell: SCO does not own the copyrights to UNIX and, by extension, they cannot demand licensing fees from companies that use Linux.

Huh?

Let’s explore the case. Back in late 1995 Novell sold Unix to The Santa Cruz Operation, SCO’s predecessor. The contract was confusing as to who actually owned the copyright for the code. SCO claimed that it was the rightful owner — or if it wasn’t, it should be as a result of the sale. Eight years later, SCO sued IBM, claiming IBM included bits of SCO’s copyrighted UNIX code in its version of Linux. Novell disputed that claim, saying that it owned the copyrighted code and it was just fine with Novell if IBM used it in Linux. (Still with me? Good.)

Three court cases enused. SCO lost the first in August 2007 when a Utah federal judge ruled that SCO didn’t own the copyrighted code. However, SCO sorta won when the Tenth Circuit ruled last August that the issue of who owned the copyrights needed to be settled by a jury. Hence the decision yesterday.

Despite its 1-2 won-loss record in this case, SCO isn’t giving up. According to The Salt Lake Tribune:

“As for SCO, [Edward] Cahn [the trustee running SCO as part of its bankruptcy proceedings] said the company would discuss what the ruling means for its Unix business. He pointed out that presiding U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart still has parts of a verdict to render that will affect the case’s final outcome. For example, Stewart is being asked to rule whether Novell still needs to transfer the copyrights to SCO as part of the sales contract and whether Novell had the right to waive SCO’s claims against IBM. ‘We still have claims against IBM irrespective of this verdict,’ Cahn said.”

The takeaways?

• Whenever you buy something really big or expensive, always take the time to read the fine print. (I’m looking at you, eBay.)

• SCO’s sole line of business appears to be litigation. (Look for the highlighted words.)

• This is a big deal for Linux and open source software, but will go unnoticed by almost everyone.

ReadWriteWeb reports on a recent head-to-head test of Flash vs. HTML5 video. The results? “Flash isn’t always a CPU hog, sometimes that honor goes to HTML5.”

Flash works best when it can take advantage of hardware acceleration. This is generally not a problem under Windows, so in many cases Flash actually runs more efficiently than HTML5. This is one of the benefits of living in the Windows world, which is run by a Putin-esque dictator who sees the big picture and wants to work with other countries in order to enhance his own power.

Linux and Mac OS X are another story, however. Due to the Balkanization of Linux, it doesn’t have a standard API for Adobe to use for video hardware acceleration. Thus, Flash is going to hog CPUs for the forseeable future. (Which is why I have to use Flashblock on the linux laptop on which I am now typing. Otherwise it slows to a crawl and I have to fight the urge to fling it against the wall.)

The Dear Leader of Mac OS isn’t interested in anyone else’s economy. He wants to control every aspect of his own, which (he’s convinced) will lead to world domination. So he treats hardware acceleration as a state secret:

“Apple isn’t allowing Flash to become more efficient on their Mac OS X/Safari platform (or their iPod/iPhone/iPad one, either) by not providing the access to the hardware it needs to reduce its CPU load … In blocking Flash on Apple devices, the company can easily claim that it’s simply not an efficient technology … and that’s true for now, considering how it’s set up. But if the company wanted to allow it and make it work, it seems reasonable to believe that they could. This is what leads some insiders to believe that the decision to block Flash is less of a technological one and more of a business-minded one. After all, if you could easily visit Hulu.com to stream TV shows and movies, then why would you need to buy them from the iTunes Store?”