The increasingly bitter battle between SCO and the Linux community took a major twist when Red Hat took on the mantle of Linux champion and on Monday lodged a pre-emptive court action against SCO, arguing that Red Hat's technologies do not infringe any intellectual property of SCO and seeking to hold SCO accountable for "unfair and deceptive" actions.
The dispute stems from a separate battle between SCO and IBM, which began in March this year when SCO accused IBM of infringing SCO's rights in the UNIX operating system.
SCO sued IBM for $1 billion, alleging that it gave UNIX rights away to Linux. In May, SCO went further, claiming 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 (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 with this was that those companies that did not purchase such a license would find themselves on the wrong end of an infringement suit.
The Linux community has been outraged by SCO's actions, seeing them as an attempt to both ease SCO's troubled financial position, and stall the ever-growing interest in the Linux operating system. Only this week, Linux distributor SuSE achieved the first ever security certification of Linux, enabling the adoption of Linux by governments and companies around the world for mission critical environments.
SCO's President and CEO, Darl McBride responded to Red Hat's lawsuit on Monday by letter, since published on the company's web site. He wrote, "Of course, we will prepare our legal response as required by your complaint. Be advised that our response will likely include counterclaims for copyright infringement and conspiracy."
McBride continued, "I must say that your decision to file legal action does not seem conducive to the long-term survivability of Linux."
SCO has now added fuel to the fire by releasing 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.
SCO's web site seeks to justify the prices:
"SCO has invested hundreds of millions in the development of UNIX and is therefore entitled to a reasonable return on its investment. SCO believes that major portions of the 2.4 and later versions of the Linux kernel are unauthorized derivative works of SCO UNIX IP."
The Linux community seems to be rallying behind Red Hat. Rival Linux distributor SuSE said in a statement:
"There have been many unsubstantiated and inflammatory statements made recently in an attempt, we believe, primarily to slow the inevitable acceptance of Linux. Linux is a disruptive technology, troubling to many, puzzling to some, potentially freeing to all. With every disruptive technology, there will be those who fight to maintain the status quo, fight to hold on to a losing proposition.
"We applaud [Red Hat's] efforts to restrict the rhetoric of the SCO group - and the FUD [fear, uncertainty, doubt] they are trying to instil - and will determine quickly what actions SuSE can take to support Red Hat in their efforts."