SCO lawsuit is worse for Linux than IBM

Today's focus: SCO lawsuit is worse for Linux than IBM

By Phil Hochmuth

Those following the recent news of the SCO Group suing IBM for
$1 billion for alleged Unix patent infringements may be asking
yourself, "how did it come to this?" Unfortunately, the suit may
also be causing some IT professionals to worriedly ask, "What
does this mean for my Linux server farm?"

The lawsuit claims that IBM caused $1 billion in damages to the
Linux/Unix company by hijacking code from Unix - of which SCO
owns the majority of intellectual property - and building it
into Linux. This egregious behavior, SCO claims, made the Linux
operating system more enterprise-ready, with such features as
the journal file system, better symmetric multiprocessing and
memory.

In SCO's complaint, the company says IBM did this to promote
Linux as the alternative to SCO for Unix on Intel. To make its
point, the company's strong-worded complaint filed with the
Third Judicial District of Salt Lake County states:

"Prior to IBM's involvement, Linux was the software equivalent
of a bicycle. Unix was the software equivalent of a luxury car
... It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach Unix
performance standards for complete enterprise functionality
without the misappropriation of Unix code, methods or concepts
to achieve such performance, and coordination by a larger
developer, such as IBM." These are strong words from a company
that sells and supports Linux products, along with its own SCO
Unix software.

Some experts say the lawsuit is more of a public-relations move
by a company that has been in the red financially at the end of
its last three fiscal years. But others say it threatens Linux
itself more than IBM, since it raises more questions about the
"safeness" of Linux as an enterprise platform, just as big
businesses had started coming around over previous FUD factors
around the technology.

The potential implications in the case range from ironic, to
frightening. The company says it has the right to withdraw IBM's
right to sell AIX if IBM continues its "anticompetitive
practices." Also, if SCO is proven right, innumerable Linux
users would instantly be committing copyright violations by
running Linux servers with the ill-gotten "enterprise
enhancements" gleamed from Unix. While observers say SCO has a
small chance against the deep-pocketed Big Blue, this
development is something to keep an eye on for all enterprise
Linux users.

RELATED EDITORIAL LINKS

Read SCO's lawsuit
http://www.sco.com/scosource/complaint3.06.03.html

A head-spinning timeline of Unix and Linux origins, from SCO's point of
view
http://www.sco.com/scosource/unixtree/unixhistory01.html

SCO sues IBM for $1 billion for infringement
Network World, 03/10/03
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0310scoibm.html

To facilitate co-ordination regarding the introduction of OSS SW in Vietnam

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