After last week’s ruling that Novell, not SCO, is the rightful owner of the copyrights relating to the Unix operating system, more than a few folks got a little worried that Novell might use its newfound patents to go on a suing spree. However, according to Novell, software developers and enterprises alike have nothing to fear. “We’ve always felt … that we don’t believe there’s UNIX in Linux,” Novell spokesperson Bruce Lowry told Ars Technica. “We’ve owned the UNIX copyrights for many years now, so just having this confirmed by the court doesn’t mean we’re suddenly going to change our policies with regard to UNIX.” It’s good to see Novell taking the higher ground here, for the good of open-source, rather than using its patent portfolio to exploit and intimidate the Linux community, like a certain one of the company’s partners has been known to do. “We’ve been using our ownership of the copyrights to defend Linux, so it would make no sense to suddenly turn around and say we’re going to use them to attack Linux,” Lowry said.

For more on Novell’s UNIX stance:
– see this article from Ars Technica