The license agreements are the latest development in a bitter battle between the software company and the Linux community. It began in March this year when SCO accused IBM of breaching SCO's patents in the UNIX system.
SCO purchased many of the patents in UNIX in 1995, including source code, source documentation, software development contracts, licenses and other intellectual property that pertained to UNIX-related business. At the time IBM already held a licence to use UNIX in the creation of its own AIX operating system.
SCO alleges that IBM gave the rights away to Linux and in March this year launched a $1 billion lawsuit against IBM. In May, SCO warned 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 codes. It announced on Monday that it would begin contacting companies regarding their use of Linux and offer them the chance to purchase a UnixWare license.
The company's president and CEO, Darl McBride explained, "Today, we're stating that the alleged actions of IBM and others have caused customers to use a tainted product at SCO's expense."
He went on, "Today, we're delivering a very clear message to customers regarding what they should do. Intellectual property is valuable and needs to be respected and paid for by corporations who use it for their own commercial benefit. The new UnixWare license accomplishes that objective in a fair and balanced way."
Pricing of the run-time, binary UnixWare license will be announced in the coming weeks to customers and resellers, but Gartner speculates that it will be between $500 and $700 per server.
Garter analyst, George Weiss, has recommended paying the license fee in certain circumstances. In an opinion posted on the firm's web site he states,
"Don't ignore the problem by hoping IBM will win or settle its lawsuit (that could take a year or more). An IBM win would not prevent SCO from pursuing individual claims, which, if successful, could cost far more in penalties than buying a SCO license would. If you find SCO's case compelling and you use few instances of v.2.4 [the software in question], pay the license fees."
The recommendations strengthen earlier advice given by Weiss. He also suggests that companies review all Linux installations and "Delay deployments of application and database servers if they involve critical applications that must be unencumbered of IP infringement claims".
Finally, Weiss suggests the investigation of outsourcing or its equivalent so as to pass the question of licenses over to a third party, and a go-slow approach to using Linux in "high-value or mission-critical production systems".
The Gartner opinion is available here