The code analysis dominated the conference as a result of an
ongoing legal battle between SCO, owner of rights in the UNIX
operating system, and parts of the Linux community. The dispute
began in March when SCO filed a $1 billion court action against IBM
– later upping its claim to $3 billion – alleging that IBM gave
UNIX rights away to Linux in breach of a contract between SCO and
IBM.
In May, SCO went further, claiming that Linux is an unauthorised
derivative of UNIX and that legal liability for the use of Linux
may extend to commercial users. SCO suspended all of its future
sales of the Linux operating system until further notice – and
terminated IBM's license to sell AIX, IBM's version of UNIX.
Early this month Linux distributor Red Hat joined the fray,
lodging a pre-emptive court action against SCO. The claim argued
that Red Hat's technologies do not infringe any intellectual
property of SCO and seeking to hold SCO accountable for "unfair and
deceptive" actions.
SCO made light of the allegations and announced a licensing
package for all Linux users – with a hefty price tag attached.
According to ComputerWeekly.com the company has now confirmed that
it will not refund license fees, even if it loses the ongoing legal
battles.
Two weeks ago the dispute intensified as IBM lodged a
counterclaim against SCO, arguing that SCO cannot sue over patents
that may have been used in Linux, because it was distributing Linux
products itself under the GPL (General Public License - an open
source license set up in the 1980s).
The SCO has since responded by saying that the GPL is invalid,
with the result that what started out as a 'simple' patent case has
snowballed into an action that could decide the legitimacy of open
source software as a whole.
Tensions surrounding the allegedly infringing code are high.
According to CNet News.com, at the conference SCO's CEO Darl
McBride showed slides of coding from the two operating systems.
Much of the UNIX coding was obscured, for security purposes, but
observers were allowed to analyse the coding themselves later,
provided they signed a non-disclosure agreement.
However one slide was photographed by a reporter and later
analysed by Bruce Perens, an open source advocate. In his opinion,
although the code seems to be part of that transferred to SCO, it
was also made available under the Berkeley Software Distribution
license, and is therefore legitimately in Linux.
