SCO Group suspends Linux sales, warns of UNIX rights infringements

The war for Linux market supremacy took an interesting turn last week as The SCO Group opened two new fronts in its efforts to regain what it sees as its intellectual property rights.

Lindon-based SCO (Nasdaq: SCOX) announced last week it had suspended all sales of the Linux operating system and warned commercial users of Linux that there may be legal liability tied to continued use of the OS since SCO contends that Linux is an unauthorized derivative of its UNIX operating system.

In January 2002, SCO announced it had formed a new division known as SCOsource as part of an effort to manage its UNIX intellectual property.

At the time, SCO explained that its "patents, copyrights and core technology date back to 1969 when Bell Laboratories created the original UNIX source code."

The company also announced at the same time it had retained the services of attorney David Boies, "of the law firm Boies, Schiller and Flexner for research and protection of SCO's patents, copyrights and other intellectual property."

Less than two months later, SCO launched a billion-dollar lawsuit against IBM, claiming the company had absconded with its UNIX IP by providing it to the Linux community, something SCO claims IBM did not have the rights to do. (See March 10, 2003 "Utah Tech Watch" at deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,465031743,00.html.)

Additionally, SCO gave IBM 90 days to come into compliance with its lawsuit, saying it would otherwise remove its permission for IBM to sell its version of UNIX, known as AIX.

Some industry observers estimate IBM generates upward of $10 billion in annual revenues from its AIX business, so we're not talking small potatoes here.

In the letter distributed last week to more than 1,300 corporations worldwide (see www.sco.com/scosource/letter_to_linux_customers.html), SCO President and CEO Darl McBride stated that "We have evidence that portions of UNIX System V software code have been copied into Linux and that additional other portions of UNIX System V software code have been modified and copied into Linux, seemingly for the purposes of obfuscating their original source."

McBride further added that "legal liability . . . may also rest with the end user."

The two-punch combination of SCO halting its sales of Linux, as well as its initial mailing barrage, sends a very loud message to the Linux community at large and to organizations around the world that it is very serious about its intent to protect (and generate revenues from) its intellectual properties (particularly UNIX).