Mailbag: Challenging SCO

Linuxworld’s mailbag was stretched this week following an article we posted on SCO’s claims to owning the Unix source code.

Reader Leon Brooks, also vice president of the Perth Linux User Group, has allowed us to publish his letter.

The director of SCO Australia and NZ Kieran O'Shaughnessy said: “It took us 25 years to build our business and it took [IBM] four years simply by stealing code and then giving it away free.”

I'm pretty sure Kieran only does this for the sensation value, but this particular piece of hyper-chutzpah needs to be answered:

• Linux was and is an enterprise-class piece of software, even if you completely delete IBM's contributions to it;

• IBM didn't steal anything, they wrote their own software, adapted one copy of it for OS/2, another for Monterey, and later the OS/2 version of it again for Linux;

• The SCO Group have in fact been distributing circa 700,000 lines of IBM-written code without a licence to do so, since at least the time they denounced the GPL until the 4th of August this year and possibly later;

• Unlike The SCO Group's claims, the code stolen from IBM is not vapourware, it is in fact listed in exquisite detail in the court documents recently filed;

• IBM have not given away any code to Linux, they still own it; what they have done is licensed others to use the code that they wrote and own at no charge through the GPL;

• IBM are required to use the GPL licence if they wish to modify Linux itself - as they have;

• There is no "us", the real Santa Cruz Operation is now called Tarantella, with their name and a few of their programmers essentially hijacked by a decapitated Caldera. Neither Darl (McBride), Blake (Stowell) nor Kieran oversaw any of the core development of any original Unix, let alone AT&T's derivative;

• SCO Unix is no longer an enterprise-class software system; since their disclaimer of the GPL, the very software which allowed UnixWare to stay within shouting distance of modern software trends is no longer available to them.

The article also states: “Early this year, O'Shaughnessy warned that SCO had prepared a hit list and would approach Australian Linux users to ensure they had an IP licence.”

This is illegal, and since SCO-ANZ hasn't followed up on it, I guess Kieran knows that. So why is he raising that empty threat again? Every time he does so he opens himself to a fresh count of fraud.

"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix," he added.

Odd, then, that none of the expert testimony remaining in the case, and *none* of the expert testimony Ken Brown of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute tried to raise along the same lines supports that claim. Even odder that *all* of the non-hearsay testimony in both places supports the *opposite* stance.

It's also worth considering in particular some of the expert testimony submitted recently by IBM, from the people actually involved in AT&T's original licence of Unix to IBM, all of which says that The SCO Group has no case.

I don't need to defend IBM, they have their own lawyers and PR section for that, but Kieran and his company are essentially accusing all of the contributors to and deployers of Linux of stealing. Since those claims are baseless, continuing to make them amounts to slander and in some cases fraud against the Linux community, including me.

The only reason Kieran hasn't had a court order tossed at his feet is because as an individual developer, I can't afford to do that and defend myself against the inevitable legal consequences.

If you want to know how The SCO Group's economics are supposed to work, you only need to read some of Darl's early statements. What he wants to do is turn a free road, built by others, into a toll road (all tolls payable, of course, to The SCO Group and eventually Darl). Another word for this business model is "highwayman".