[Updated May 14, 2003 — The SCO Group (SCO) has filed a highly publicized lawsuit against IBM, reportedly valued in the billions of dollars, charging that IBM has misappropriated technology obtained through its license of the Unix operating system to the detriment of SCO, and has tried to destroy the economic value of Unix (also to the detriment of SCO) through its massive support of the open… source Linux operating system.

While this naturally has some Linux vendors, corporate customers, and end users understandably concerned, most analysts do not consider this to be an attack on Linux, but rather the effort of a desperate company to go after one of the world's largest companies for financial gain.

Will this hurt embedded Linux?

Asked whether he anticipated any problems for embedded Linux adoption based on this suit, LinuxDevices.com founder and executive editor Rick Lehrbaum replied, “The FUD side of this is exactly what companies like Wind River, QNX, and Microsoft have been saying all along. However, in reality those companies are each every bit as susceptable to the same sort of problem — suddenly being hit with a patent infringement or intellectual property misappropriation claim. So I really don't see this as having anything at all to do with Linux at this point.”

“Mostly it's the media who have jumped all over the juicy headlines like 'SCO deals fatal blow to Linux,” Lehrbaum added.

“Ultimately, whether the SCO/IBM suit hurts Linux — or embedded Linux — will clearly depend on how the action plays out,” Lehrbaum said. “If SCO can successfully demonstrate that proprietary Unix technology has actually been misappropriated into Linux other other GNU software, that would be significant. At this point, there's absolutely no reason to believe that this is the case.”

To provide added perspective, we provide the following summaries of (and links to) the SCO announcement of its lawsuit against IBM, the SCO court filing itself, and open letters from key leaders of the open source community, as well as several of the many international news stories surrounding this unusual situation.

What SCO has said and done

Here are some key statements issued by SCO . . .

• Press release: SCO Files Lawsuit Against IBM — “The SCO Group (SCO), the owner of the UNIX operating system, announced today that it has filed legal action against IBM in the State Court of Utah, for misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition and breach of contract. The complaint alleges that IBM made concentrated efforts to improperly destroy the economic value of UNIX, particularly UNIX on Intel, to benefit IBM's new Linux services business . . .” Read press release
• Text of SCO “Complaint” — The full text of SCO's legal filing against IBM can be found here
• SCO threatens Linux vendors and commercial users — on May 14, 2003 SCO significantly widened its attack beyond IBM, claiming it had discovered conclusive evidence that UNIX code was misappropriated into Linux, discontinuing the sale of its own Linux distribution, and publicly warning SCO partners, Linux vendors, and commercial end users of prospective liability. Story.
• SCO “Letter to Linux Customers” — May 12, 2003 — you can read SCO's open letter of warning, to vendors and users of Linux, here

Added perspective . . .

This section of our special report provides pointers to selected relevant news, analysis, and commentary from around the web . . .

• CNET: SCO sues Big Blue over Unix, Linux — CNET quotes Chris Sontag, senior vice president of operating systems at SCO, as saying “We are alleging they have contaminated their Linux work with inappropriate knowledge from Unix.” But, the CNET goes on to say that “analysts see it as a desperate by a company that hasn't been profitable in its current incarnation.” Story
• CNET: IBM takes issue with SCO Unix suit — in this followup story, CNET looks at IBM's response to the suit and presents the perspectives of an intellectual-property attorney, industry analyst, open source expert, and SuSE, a partner of SCO in the UnitedLinux initiative. CNET quotes SuSE CEO Richard Seibt as saying that, as a result of the action taken by SCO against IBM, “. . . we are currently re-evaluating our relationship with the SCO Group.” Story
• eWEEK: SCO CEO says IBM Suit Not About Linux — According to eWEEK, SCO Group CEO Darl McBride has stated that the legal action by SCO against IBM has nothing to do with either Linux or the open-source community. Rather, SCO's action “is and is only about IBM and the contractual violations that we are alleging IBM has made and that we are going to enforce,” eWEEK quotes McBride as saying. Story
• Eric Raymond: Open letter on SCO IP lawsuit — Open source advocate/author Eric S. Raymond responds to the SCO lawsuit with an open letter . . . Read letter
• Buce Perens: “This is the end of SCO, for sure.” — Open source advocate/author Bruce Perens, issued an open letter about the SCO filing against IBM, in which he characterizes the SCO lawsuit as: “SCO is the thief who puts a gun to his own head and says give me your money or I'll shoot.” Additionally, Perens counters the notion that Linux has benefited due to IBM misappropriating SCO-owned Unix technology towards porting Linux to the x86 architecture, or other Linux enhancements. And then, there's this point made by Perens (quoting from the Slashdot posting): “SCO is also party to the GPL, which invalidates their patent portfolio for any of their patents that happen to have been used in a Linux system that they distributed. Under the GPL terms, if you distribute your patented practice in GPL software, you must grant a license to everyone to make use of that patent in any GPL software, for any field of use. This is why SCO's initial claim seems to be focusing on an NDA rather than patents. And of course, the fundamental patents that apply to Unix would have expired some 15 years ago. ” Read letter

 
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