SCO to Reveal Allegedly Copied Code, May 15, 2003

Chris Sontag, senior vice president and general manager of The SCO Group's SCOsource licensing operation, said in an interview that he will show independent experts, under a non-disclosure agreement, the evidence behind SCO's allegations that the Linux kernel source contains code copied from SCO UnixWare illegally and without credit.

The memorandum, which focused on system software for desktop computers, specifically targeted Linux, a small but emerging competitor. "Under NO circumstances lose against Linux," Ayala said.

Joe Eckert, vice president of corporate communications at Germany-based SuSE, expressed surprise at SCO's attacks. "SCO's actions are... indeed curious. We are not aware, nor has SCO made any specific attempt to make us aware, of any unauthorized code in any SuSE Linux product," Eckert said in a statement. "As a matter of policy, we have diligent processes for ensuring that appropriate licensing arrangements (open source or otherwise) are in place for all code used in our products."

Citrix has outlined plans to develop a Linux version of one of its key security products--because customers believe that using Windows servers for access systems exposes them to too many security risks.

Although SCO's O'Shaughnessy believes there's "a very real possibility" that CEOs or CIOs would order their IT departments to remove Linux from their systems, at least until the copyright issues were sorted out, McIsaac thinks otherwise.

The analyst said it will be business as usual for the next six to nine months but if this stretches out to 18 months, then it might have an impact on Linux adoption rates.

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