Come and get your Linux: SCO opens door to suing self?

Server ajar

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Software, 15th May 2003 22:28 GMT

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Yesterday, SCO was so shocked - shocked! - by the degrading effects of Linux on Unix, that it pulled out of the Linux business.

The company sent warning letters to 1,500 enterprises and solemnly announced that "until the attendant risks with Linux are better understood and properly resolved, the company will suspend all of its future sales of the Linux operating system".

It also promised "all actions necessary" to stop the "ongoing violation of our intellectual property".

However SCO continues to distribute the poison. Visitors to the company's ftp server at ftp.caldera.com are greeted with this message:

Welcome to the Caldera International FTP site!
"Unifying Unix with Linux for Business"

"For Linux ISO downloads, please connect to ftp.iso.caldera.com," visitors are advised. So we did, and there they are.

Yesterday SCO said that it would "hold [SCO Linux and OpenLinux customers] harmless from any SCO intellectual property issues regarding SCO Linux and Caldera OpenLinux products."

Editor in Chief of Linux Journal Don Marti has teased an allegation from SCO's senior VP Chris Sontag that infringing code is "all over the place" in the Linux source, including the kernel itself.

But it looks like the infringement is "ongoing" all over SCO's ftp servers, too.

Now there's a serious point to this malarkey. How can Scaldera claim damages when it has not only left the stable door open, but been sending out the horse, with a hefty good-luck thump on its backside, for over two years now? ®