Xinuos, formed around SCO Group assets a decade ago under the name UnXis and at the time disavowing any interest in continuing SCO's long-running Linux litigation, today sued IBM and Red Hat for alleged copyright and antitrust law violations.

"First, IBM stole Xinuos' intellectual property and used that stolen property to build and sell a product to compete with Xinuos itself," the US Virgin Islands-based software biz claims in its complaint [PDF]. "Second, stolen property in IBM's hand, IBM and Red Hat illegally agreed to divide the relevant market and use their growing market powers to victimize consumers, innovative competitors, and innovation itself."

The complaint further contends that after the two companies conspired to divide the market, IBM then acquired Red Hat to solidify its position.

SCO Group in 2003 made a similar intellectual property claim. It argued that SCO Group owned the rights to AT&T's Unix and UnixWare operating system source code, that Linux 2.4.x and 2.5.x were unauthorized derivatives of Unix, and that IBM violated its contractual obligations by distributing Linux code.

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"While this case is about Xinuos and the theft of our intellectual property," said Sean Snyder, president and CEO of Xinuos, in a statement. "It is also about market manipulation that has harmed consumers, competitors, the open-source community, and innovation itself."

An IBM spokesperson told The Register that the company has not yet been served with a copy of the complaint. Red Hat did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In June, 2019, Microsoft applied for a US patent covering enhancements to a data encoding method known as rANS, one of several variants in the Asymmetric Numeral System (ANS) family that form the foundation of data compression schemes used by Apple, Facebook, Google, various other companies, and open source projects.

Its US patent application was published on the last day of 2020. Recently, the inventor of ANS, Jarosław Duda, assistant professor at Institute of Computer Science at Jagiellonian University in Poland, expressed concern that if Microsoft's patent application is granted, anyone using software that incorporates an ANS-based encoder could be at risk of a potential infringement claim.

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"Google ended up abandoning that application," said Alex Moss, staff attorney for the EFF and Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents, in an email to The Register. "But it looks like Microsoft picked up right where it left off."

"Professor Duda’s concerns about the Microsoft application are similarly well-founded: these are broad claims that implicate practically any use of ANS without adding anything new and non-obvious," said Moss.

The USPTO has already said as much, Moss explained: It has rejected this application twice before, including a final rejection for obviousness.

The USPTO issued a non-final rejection of the application on May 21, 2020. Microsoft sought a review of the decision and the patent agency then issued a final rejection on October 27, 2020.

Yet on March 2, 2021, Microsoft tried one more time to get its patent application approved. In a USPTO explanatory filing, attorney Kyle Rinehart said, "The Applicant respectfully disagrees with the rejections."

"Microsoft’s recent filing takes advantage of what’s called the "After Final Consideration Pilot 2.0" program," Moss explained. "This program was started under former Director of the Patent Office, Andrei Iancu, and before leaving office, he extended the program through September 30, 2021."

The development teams behind the two most successful and influential open-source chess programs, Stockfish and Leela Chess Zero, have issued statements denouncing the commercial program Fat Fritz 2 and the company Chessbase that is selling the program for 99,90 euros.

The statements (Stockfish blog, lichess announcement) assert that the engine in Fat Fritz 2 is Stockfish with minimal changes, that Fat Fritz 2 has violated the GNU General Public License under which Stockfish is released, and that Chessbase's marketing has made false claims about Fat Fritz 2's playing strength.

When it comes to using, developing, and promoting software, the numerous licenses that accompany them can be confusing for even expert users. Open-source and proprietary licenses often butt heads. One promotes a closed and guarded method of licensing, whereas the latter lets people use software more freely.

In this post, we compare both open and proprietary licenses. We also discuss whether they work well together or the relationship is estranged.

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In short, open and proprietary licenses will always rub each other the wrong way. However, there can be a system where companies still retain brand rights while letting users study and tweak the code. The benefits to the codebase and user security are of immense benefit to everyone.