SCO offers legal Linux licenses

LINDON — The SCO Group said Monday that it has strengthened its case in an ongoing computer operating system battle but is offering users a way to avoid lawsuits.

The moves sent the company's stock to a high point for the year.

Lindon-based SCO said it has received U.S. copyright registrations for its Unix System V source code — which it claims IBM and others have illegally placed into the Linux operating system — and will offer commercial Linux users licenses of SCO's UnixWare to support Linux. The company won't hold those buyers responsible for any past copyright violations or any future use of Linux in a "run-only" format.

"SCO is giving customers the ability to gain a license to run Linux legally on a run-only basis," Darl McBride, SCO's president and chief executive officer, said during a Monday conference call.

SCO contends the appropriation of Unix source code into Linux has cost it tons of money. It has sued International Business Machines for billions and has told more than 1,500 other companies that they, too, face potential lawsuits over use of Linux.

Company officials said Monday that the copyright registrations are needed if the matter escalates to the litigation stage and that the conflict has advanced from a contract issue to one involving intellectual property and copyrights.

SCO contends that IBM has profited by putting Unix source code into Linux illegally, and that has shifted legal liability risk to Linux end users.

SCO has cited statistics that indicate Linux is being used on more than 2.4 million computer servers.

"The first case (IBM's) has to do with people we have relationships with, i.e. contracts. And this case with copyrights, we have broad enforcement capability with those that we may not have direct relationships with," McBride said. "So, as we go forward, our goal is not to litigate. . . . We have a solution here for you that gets you clean, gets you square, with use of Linux without having to go into the courtroom."

Although McBride described SCO as having "broad legal rights," he said the company plans to use them "carefully and judiciously," preferring sales of the UnixWare product to litigation against those using the "tainted" Linux.