It's 2009 and SCO are maintaining the Linux rage - what the?

By David M Williams
Monday, 12 January 2009 08:08

Opinion and Analysis

Yes, this is a 2009 headline. Who'd have thought? The SCO Group is back in the news with plans to auction off its core products so the proceeds can continue its lawsuits over alleged copyright violations in Linux. Is CEO Darl McBride mad?

Personally, I thought SCO was long gone but they’re still alive and kicking.

SCO was formerly known as Caldera Systems and Caldera International. In 2001 the company acquired the Server Software and Services Division of the Santa Cruz Operation – known affectionately as SCO.

SCO had been described by Eric S. Raymond as “the first UNIX company” because previously UNIX vendors had been either phone companies (like AT&T) or computer hardware manufacturers (like Sun Microsystems or Digital Electronics Corporation.)

Realising the good will that had been built up in the name “SCO” Caldera renamed themselves as SCO, and later again to The SCO Group. Obviously this has created some confusion between the two companies. Some refer to the Santa Cruz Operation now as the “old SCO” or “Santa Cruz” to make a distinction from The SCO Group.

Nevertheless, on March 6th 2003 The SCO Group filed a $1 billion lawsuit in the United States against IBM for allegedly “devaluing” its version of the UNIX operating system. The damages were later increased to $3b and subsequently further revised to $5b.

SCO’s claim was that IBM had, without any permission or authority to do so, contributed significant amounts of SCO intellectual property into the codebase of the Linux operating system.

That month The SCO Group also sent letters to members of the Fortune 1000 and Global 500 companies warning them of possible liability if they used Linux.

This legal action stunned the free and open source community and had been unexpected and unprecedented. If the action was successful, if the case had merit, it would certainly have hurt the cause of Linux along with all those who had adopted it because of its inherent freedoms.

Yet, the SCO v. IBM case was only the beginning. And read on - it’s going to continue this year! And, no, it's not April 1st.

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