SCO casts wider net for infringers, Jan 23, 2003

SCO Group has hired high-profile attorney David Boies to see whether Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and versions of BSD infringe on Unix intellectual property the company owns, Chief Executive Darl McBride said Wednesday

Red Hat had been arguing for years that its Linux operating system was ready for mainstream corporate use, but the company found out just how much work still had to be done when it took on Morgan Stanley as a customer in May 2001

The Seattle-based digital media company introduced the Helix DNA Server code into the open-source community, finalising its push to build a universal system for digital media delivery over Linux, Windows and Unix-based operating systems in competition with Microsoft. But while its earlier-released media player provides support for MPEG-4 -- an emerging standard for sending compressed digital files -- its server code does not.

Ximian's Evolution software can now connect to Sun's Open Network Environment server software, a move that could help open source challenge Windows on the desktop

For now, Linux business is coming mostly at the expense of Sun. Linux believers say a system using Sun's servers offer no demonstrable advantages over the plain-vanilla servers running Linux, despite being roughly 50% more expensive. Linux may also carve into Microsoft's NT server software market, but since NT is significantly cheaper than Sun's Unix offerings, it hasn't been hit as hard yet on Wall Street. Of course, the fact that Linux frees the Street from being beholden to either Microsoft or Sun's proprietary business models is another draw. "Ultimately, we like agnostic solutions," says Merrill's McKinley, who has led a big push for Linux. Increasingly that's what the proprietary companies are up against. That and an army of penguins.

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