NEWS The SCO Group is initially soft-pedalling threats of lawsuits against Australian and New Zealand companies who use Linux, as it starts marketing licences to secure revenue for use of the open-source software.
SCO's Australian and New Zealand regional general manager, Kieran O'Shaughnessy, told ZDNet Australia "in no way will I be threatening users with lawsuits" during the sale process, which kicks off this week.
However, O' Shaughnessy also warned that "SCO reserves its right to pursue legal redress as a last resort in resolving copyright infringement [issues]".
O'Shaughnessy's remarks came after Chris Sontag, the senior vice president and general manager of SCOsource, which is the company's intellectual property arm, warned in the UK last week that the vendor was poised to launch legal action against a number of companies worldwide for alleged intellectual property breaches involving Linux.
Sontag said: "I would expect within the next few weeks we will have a number of Linux end-users who we will have identified and taken legal action (against)".
However, O'Shaughnessy confirmed that "at this time there will be no legal action against users in Australia and New Zealand".
The SCO Group launched its licensing program in the US last year after claiming that Linux breached its Unix System V intellectual property.
The company's claims have been rejected and vilified by open-source advocates worldwide, with Melbourne-based Open Source Victoria being a particularly strident critic locally.
O'Shaughnessy made the remarks as the vendor this morning announced the immediate pricing and availability of licences - which the company says permits the use of its intellectual property, in binary form only, as contained in Linux distributions - for the local market.
According to the vendor, "by purchasing the licence, customers are properly compensating SCO for the Unix source code, derivative Unix code and other Unix-related intellectual property and copyrights owned by SCO as it is currently found in Linux".
O'Shaughnessy said companies who purchase one-off, in-perpetuity licences will pay A$999 per server processor and A$285 per desktop processor. The licence is also being offered to embedded-device manufacturers who use Linux to run their devices.
He added that an annual subscription version of the licences was in the works, but pricing was yet to be confirmed.
O'Shaughnessy said the licence would be made available to selected channel partners in the near future. He will this week be briefing two partners in Australia - Tardis and MPA Systems, and two in New Zealand - MPA (no relation to MPA Systems) and Base 10 Technology, over the licences.
Tech heavyweight Telstra, which is a strong proponent of Linux and open source software, declined to comment on the issue when approached by ZDNet Australia last week.
Matt Loney contributed to this report
Comments
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1. Thomas Frayne
SCO threatens copyright infringement lawsuits, then backs off. On December 5, SCO's Keven McBride told the judge that SCO would be filing copyright claims against IBM "in a few days, or no less than a week". They haven't filed yet.
He also objected to answering IBM's questions on copyright, but said that SCO would comply when the judge insisted.
SCO responded to the court order on 1/12/04.
On 1/13/04, in the interview "SCO shows IBM the code", SCO spokesman Bruce Stowell said: "Monday's response included no examples of copyright violations. "We've not introduced copyright infringement as part of our case with IBM. We've tried to make it clear that it's a contract issue."
SCO could have made arguments like this before it was ordered to respond to IBM's questions without further discussion. Now it's too late.
The order said to identify all rights that SCO claimed. It was not limited to rights that SCO was currently claiming as part of its suit against IBM, and, in my opinion, even includes the code contributed by SCO to Linux.
If, as Stowell said, SCO did not specify any copyrights that it owns in Linux, then either it is not claiming to own any such copyrights, or it has not complied with the court order.
If SCO now officially declines to claim ownership of any such copyrights, then it is hard to see how they could claim them in any later suit against a Linux user or distributor.
If SCO does claim ownership, it has blatantly defied the court order, and the judge can order sanctions. My guess is that part of the sanctions would be to bar SCO from suing anyone on any claims that it failed to specify in its 1/12 response to the compel order. The judge might also order SCO to show cause why it should not be held in contempt, and why it should not suffer sanctions for failing to comply with the order.
2. Anthony Wilde
What are SCO like... The whole point of UNIX on Intel (aka Linux) is that its not owned by anyone and not dictated to by the likes of Microsoft
Who the hell is going to pay a $1000 per processor for an unsupported OS - you may as well have Win2000 or Win2003 Server!
Just how much did SCO pay for the IP rights to SysV? if there are a million linux licences out there I'm sure they didnt pay a $billion!!!