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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
A software company launches a billion-dollar suit against the open-source operating system's biggest backer, IBM -- and only succeeds in underscoring Linux's strength.
Jun 3, 2003 | If you ask Chris Sontag, a vice president at the SCO Group, how his tiny software firm decided to launch a billion-dollar lawsuit against IBM and became, in the process, the most reviled name in the open-source programming world, he'll tell you that the whole thing started rather innocently. Sontag says that SCO did not go looking for trouble with fans of free software; instead, trouble found SCO. In January the company, which makes most of its money from the sale of Unix and Linux operating system software, embarked on a routine review of its business holdings. And during the review, "we identified some concerns we had in terms of our intellectual property."
Specifically, the company determined that some source code in Linux had a lot in common with code in Unix -- and SCO says that in 1995, it purchased rights to all the original Unix source code from the software firm Novell. In other words, SCO believes that Linux, an OS that can be freely copied and modified by anyone, is illegal. Linux is, SCO says, "an unauthorized derivative of Unix." If SCO's accusations are affirmed in court, the millions of companies and individual users who have increasingly built their lives around Linux over the last decade might have to start scrambling for an alternative or face costly penalties.
But that was not all. During its examination of Linux source code, SCO says it found that it could trace what it believes was Unix code in Linux to one of its longtime partners in the Unix business: IBM. Sontag says that SCO immediately tried to notify IBM of copyright violations in Linux, but "we effectively got no response." So on March 7, SCO filed suit against IBM, alleging "misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition and breach of contract." In its complaint, SCO claims that IBM took parts of SCO's Unix code and illegally inserted the code into Linux. Last month, to warn end users about its findings, SCO sent about 1,500 corporate Linux customers a letter saying they could be in legal hot water if they continued to use Linux, which SCO told them was "developed by improper use of proprietary methods and concepts."
SCO's war on Linux has become a hot topic in open-source circles, inspiring heated discussions on developer listservs and almost daily posts on Slashdot. Opinion in these forums, as well as among more dispassionate industry observers, runs about 99 percent anti-SCO. Nobody believes Sontag's story, and it's not hard to see why. SCO's version of the history of Unix and Linux -- as the company has explained it to reporters and as it outlines in its legal complaint against IBM -- comes off as a one-sided and self-serving account. Critics say the company misstates and exaggerates its own contributions to Unix, and SCO has yet to provide a single example of infringing code it says it has found in Linux.
Industry watchers have attributed SCO's actions to economic desperation. The firm's products have not been doing well recently; the company lost about $25 million last year. SCO now has a stated goal of trying to make money by selling licenses to its Unix intellectual property, and critics see the IBM suit as perhaps only the first of many litigious efforts SCO will attempt. IBM intends to fight the case, but SCO may hope that escalating its rhetoric will make business for Linux companies so difficult that they'll cave in -- either by paying SCO licensing fees or buying the firm out.
The strategy is not entirely illogical, and SCO's efforts have met with some initial success. In mid-May, Microsoft, which considers Linux its main software rival, made headlines when it decided to purchase a Unix license from SCO. The sum Microsoft paid for the license was not disclosed but is thought to be around $10 million -- pocket change for Microsoft. Microsoft says it purchased the license "to ensure [intellectual property] compliance across Microsoft solutions," but many Linux advocates and industry observers view the move as an obvious flanking attack on its open-source competitor. The company denied any unseemly ulterior motives. "Our agreement with SCO is independent of any other industry action and solely designed for the benefit of our customers and our products," a spokesman said in an e-mail.
Whatever Microsoft's intentions, its involvement in the case clearly didn't help SCO. Indeed, what's interesting about this story is that, no matter what SCO does, virtually nobody in the industry appears to take the company seriously. SCO was likely not expecting this reaction; when you sue one of the world's biggest firms for a billion dollars, you expect the world to give you some respect! Yet when SCO filed its case, people laughed. And when it threatened Linux users, and sold Microsoft on its plans, people still didn't come around to SCO's worldview. They only seemed to laugh some more.
Why isn't the open-source software community cowering in the face of a billion-dollar lawsuit and a threat against all corporate users of Linux? Some part of their confidence has to do with the general weakness of SCO's case. Even though SCO has hired David Boies as its attorney -- the legal star whose past clients include Al Gore and Napster -- few experts who've read SCO's complaint consider the argument convincing. The case seemed to be further weakened on Wednesday, when Novell, the firm from which SCO says it purchased the copyrights to Unix, denied that it had sold any such thing to SCO.
But the reaction to SCO's claims may also reveal a larger truth about Linux, one that goes beyond this specific case: Virtually no one is buying the line that Linux is an amateurish OS and that open-source software is unsafe and possibly illegal. Open-source advocates might not consider this consensus remarkable, but it is. For years, Microsoft has tried to push the notion that Linux offers none of the legal protections of proprietary software, and that companies should therefore be wary of it. But the widespread dismissal of SCO's arguments proves that few people are taking those claims seriously. For most people, the idea that Linux is illegal seems absurd.
Indeed, in a quirk of fate, the SCO lawsuit may do more to ratify Linux's ascendant position in the software universe than anything else. Amateurs tend not to create software that inspires billion-dollar lawsuits. SCO's frantic scrambling to salvage something out of its Unix holdings -- with Microsoft's support -- is the clearest sign yet that Linux has arrived.
