Linux Online - Torvalds: What, me worry?

Torvalds: What, me worry?


Publication:	ZDNet	Date:	Jul 09 2003
Reporter:	Stephen Shankland

Linus Torvalds, who rose to fame by creating a successful alternative to Microsoft's Windows operating system, is no stranger to center stage. But this is the sort of attention Linux's founder could probably do without.

The trouble began last March when the SCO Group sued IBM for allegedly using SCO's Unix trade secrets in Linux. SCO subsequently claimed that its UnixWare source code also was copied line by line into the Linux "kernel" that Torvalds began writing as a computer science student in Finland in 1991 and still oversees.

The legal contretemps focused new attention on the process that developers follow to create open-source applications: The source code that Linux programmers contribute to open-source software is freely shared. SCO specifically blames Torvalds for not establishing a mechanism to check whether code violates intellectual property (IP) rights such as patents or copyrights.