Hello ,
I saw this article in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal and thought I'd
pass it along.
SCO Announces Plans to Seek Licensing Fees from Linux Users
by David Bank
SCO Group Inc., which claim copyright ownership over parts of
the Linux operating system, announced plans to seek licensing
fees potentially totaling billions of dollars from users of the
popular "open source" software.
By instituting the licensing program, SCO acknowledged that it
is seeking to bolster its sagging sales by wringing revenue out
of its rights to Unix, an older operating system from which
Linux was derived. SCO said it is able to pursue
copyright-infringement charges after receiving registrations for
its copyrights from the U.S. Copyright Office. Such
registrations are considered a minor procedural matter.
In March, the Lindon, Utah, company sued International Business
Machines Corp., alleging IBM transferred trade secrets to Linux
and violating a contract associated with a joint-development
project. IBM is among the biggest boosters of Linux, and its
support has helped Linux gain momentum among corporate computer
users.
SCO said it has begun to contact companies using Linux about the
licensing program, backed by the possibility of legal action
against companies that don't comply. Alternatively, said SCO
Chief Executive Darl McBride, Linux users could revert to an
earlier version of Linux before certain sophisticated features
were included.
"Linux is set to grow pretty dramatically," Mr. McBride said in
an interview. "Do we all want to move forward together and we
get a piece of that? Or do we want to turn the clock back to
where it was a few years ago?"
Exact pricing for the license hasn't been determined but will
roughly correspond to prices for UnixWare. Those fees range from
$700 for a single-processor computer server to more than $10,000
for more-powerful systems. "Even if you take an average number,
it gets to a few billion [dollars] pretty quickly," Mr. McBride
said. He said the company would seek consulting-service
contracts from such customers as well. Those prospects helped
boost SCO's share price 11% to $13.32 in 4 p.m. Nasdaq Stock
Market trading.
"Open source" refers to the ability of programmers to modify the
programming instructions, known as source code, that are used to
create software. SCO, which suspended shipments of its own
version of Linux after filing the IBM suit, has lately become
the target of considerable vitriol by Linux developers for
threatening the movement.
A spokeswoman for IBM said SCO hadn't yet shown the company any
source code that infringed its copyrights. "SCO seems to be
asking customers to pay for a license based on allegations, not
facts," said the spokeswoman, Trink Guarino.
Similarly, Leigh Day, a spokeswoman for Red Hat Inc., one of the
largest distributors of Linux, said SCO's move "is designed to
frighten customers into purchasing licenses that we feel are
unnecessary." SCO hasn't named Red Hat in any litigation. "We
feel completely confident that what we're offering to customers
is not in violation of valid intellectual property rights," Ms.
Day said.
Both Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. have recently
licensed SCO's software, effectively putting the bitter rivals
on the same side of some of the issues surrounding Linux.
Best regards,
Michael Morey
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
GOD BLESS THE USA!
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