SCO raised the spectre of copyright claims against Linux
distributors and users back in March this year when it accused IBM
of infringing SCO's rights in the UNIX operating system. SCO sued
IBM for $1 billion, although this has now been increased to $3
billion.
In May, SCO claimed that Linux is an unauthorized derivative of
UNIX and that legal liability for the use of Linux may extend to
commercial users. It suspended all of its future sales of the Linux
operating system until further notice.
Since then, SCO has registered copyrights in critical UNIX
source code (in the US, unlike the UK, there is a system of
copyright registration), and in July it announced that it would
begin contacting companies about their use of Linux and offer them
the chance to purchase a UnixWare license. The implication of this
was that those companies that did not purchase the license would
find themselves facing an infringement suit.
SCO then announced the terms of its UnixWare license, with a
promotional price of $199 for a desktop license, and $699 for a
server license with one CPU. The price jumps up dramatically after
15th October, to $1,399 for a server license.
The dispute has become increasingly bitter following the lodging
of a pre-emptive action against SCO by Linux distributor Red Hat.
This asks the court to declare that Red Hat's technologies did not
infringe on any of SCO's rights.
This suit was followed by a counter-action from IBM, refuting
SCO's claims and 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).
SCO then responded by saying that the GPL is invalid, with the
result that what started out as a breach of contract case has
snowballed into an action that threatens the entire open source
movement. The Linux community is therefore in a state of upheaval,
as commercial end users try to decide how this will affect their
businesses.
SCO argues that if Linux distributors are so confident that no
infringement has occurred, they should indemnify their end users
for any liability. But most take the line exhibited by Michael
Dell, CEO of Dell Computer, at a conference in New York this week
when he simply said: "We don't offer it."
So SCO now plans to invoice commercial Linux users. On Tuesday,
SCO spokesman Blake Stowell told CNet News.com that invoices would
be sent out "probably some time this month".
SCO has been subject to a great deal of criticism as a result of
its actions. The SCO web site has been the target of several denial
of service attacks – where a server becomes overloaded with page
requests to the point that it collapses. In late August, the site
inaccessible for several days due to a prolonged attack.
It has been facing difficulties in Germany as well. Almost three
months ago the company was ordered by a court not to make claims
within Germany about Linux infringements on SCO intellectual
property rights without showing proof of these claims. As a result
the company shut down its web site, but unfortunately one document
– a copy of a letter to SCO's partners – was still available.
Consequently, SCO has been fined $10,800 by the German court. The
offending page has been removed and SCO is appealing the
ruling.
