The SCO Group
responded to Red Hat’s announcement yesterday of a lawsuit against them for their “campaign against Linux” with a denial of the charges and the publication of two letters from SCO to Red Hat. One of the letters contains a threat against the survival of Linux.
SCO’s denial of the Red Hat lawsuit claims:
SCO has consistently stated that our UNIX System V source code and
derivative UNIX code have been misappropriated into Linux 2.4 and 2.5
kernels. We have been showing a portion of this code since early June.
SCO has not been trying to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt to end
users. We have been educating end users on the risks of running an
operating system that is an unauthorized derivative of UNIX. Linux
includes source code that is a verbatim copy of UNIX and carries with it
no warranty or indemnification. SCO’s claims are true and we look
forward to proving them in court
One of the two letters produced by SCO was never actually mailed to Red
Hat. It appears to be an attempt to use certain statements of risk from
Red Hat’s S-3 filing with the SEC on July 7, 2003, to embarrass or
counter Red Hat’s claims.
That’s an odd strategy for a firm whose own filing with the SEC on April 7, 2003,
admits that the risk of “unintended consequences of our lawsuit against
IBM may adversely affect our business.” SCO explained that the letter
was never mailed to Red Hat because Red Hat CEO Matt Szulik told them it
wasn’t necessary.
A second letter, from SCO CEO Darl McBride to Red Hat CEO Matthew J.
Szulik, which SCO claims has now been mailed, includes the following
threat against Linux: “I must say that your decision to file legal
action does not seem conducive to the long-term survivability of Linux.”
