Open season on open source
SCO Group lawsuit against IBM casts a shadow over the fast-growing ranks of companies that have adopted Linux
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff, 6/16/2003
boston.com
FUD -- the letters stand for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt -- would be a pretty good name for a creepy computer game. Instead, it's a cynical computer industry term for a hard-nosed business tactic, where a company tries to scare customers away from choosing a rival product. Practically every computer company is accused of sowing FUD from time to time. These days, the charge is being hurled at the SCO Group, the Utah-based software company that has mailed letters to users of the free Linux operating system, warning that their use of Linux could expose them to hefty legal expenses and licensing fees. SCO today is expected to intensify its campaign against one of the industry's giants, IBM Corp., with which it already is engaged in a legal tussle. And the campaign is casting a shadow over the growing worldwide community of Linux users, in businesses and other institutions.
Linux is the software industry's favorite Cinderella story. It began as the part-time project of a Finnish computer science student and a band of digital rebels in Cambridge. It has developed into one of the world's most powerful and popular operating systems, running on everything from handheld computers to mainframes.
Linux is ''open source'' software; the raw source code is available to anybody, allowing programmers to customize the code to their needs. And the software can be downloaded free, or purchased along with customer support and upgrade services. Over the past five years, Linux has been snatching away customers from costly alternatives like Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system and the advanced Unix operating system for enterprises.
But SCO, which owns the legal rights to Unix, says chunks of Unix have turned up in Linux, enabling the free software to successfully compete against software that SCO sells. Hence the warning letters to Linux users and SCO's pending lawsuit against IBM for allegedly adding SCO-owned software to Linux.
Late last Friday, CNet News reported that SCO may soon file additional lawsuits against other software companies for mingling SCO code with Linux.
It was tiny SCO's lawsuit against massive IBM that got the industry's attention, and a major development in that case should occur today. IBM licensed SCO's Unix as the basis for its own version of Unix called AIX. Last Friday, SCO canceled IBM's Unix license and demanded that IBM stop selling AIX. But IBM refused to comply, saying the license is irrevocable. Today, SCO plans to announce what steps it will take to punish the world's biggest computer firm.
The legal dramatics have thrown a chill into some Linux users. ''We have noticed a certain reticence from some of our customers to talk about the decision that they have made,'' said Joseph Eckert, a spokesman for SuSE Linux AG, the major German distributor of Linux software. Eckert said fear of legal action by SCO is causing customers to keep their heads down.
Corporate software users are also doing more research to determine their potential liability, in case SCO wins in the courtroom.
''All of these companies are doing more legal due diligence than they were six months ago,'' said Stuart Cohen, CEO of Open Source Development Lab, a Beaverton, Ore., nonprofit consortium that tests Linux-based high-end computing applications.
But both Eckert and Cohen say they've seen no sign that companies are backing away from Linux, or putting purchases on hold.
''That's not happening at all,'' said Cohen. Matthew Szulik, CEO of the biggest Linux distributor, North Carolina-based Red Hat Inc., also claimed no decrease in sales or customer inquiries.
But the SCO case has created a curious problem for one of Red Hat's biggest business partners, Sun Microsystems Inc. Sun is the leading vendor of Unix-based computers, and the growing popularity of Linux has cut into sales of its costly Solaris machines. So a successful SCO suit could help Sun win back some customers lost to Linux. On the other hand, Sun also sells a line of machines that run Red Hat Linux, and that business could be ravaged by a SCO victory.
John Loiacono, Sun's vice president for operating platforms, thinks Sun is in a position to profit either way.
''We do not hope or want this to have any impact on the open source model,'' said Loiacono. ''However, it's not our battle. . . . If people are really concerned about IP [intellectual property] issues, then we have another conversation we can have with them about Solaris.''
Companies that already have embraced Linux made it clear that they're not even thinking about going back to other operating systems. Keith Porter, vice president of information systems for KB Toys Inc., the big toy retailer based in Pittsfield, has just begun deploying Linux transaction systems in 1,250 stores nationwide. The legal saber-rattling by SCO isn't costing Porter any sleep.
''It shows these folks are worried about [Linux] because it's become real, a real solution,'' said Porter. ''They feel threated by Linux, with where it's going.''
As for the 1,500 letters SCO has mailed to corporations that use Linux, warning of dire legal consequences, Porter responded with a chuckle. ''I haven't gotten one yet,'' he said. If the letters were intended as a FUD tactic, it didn't work at KB Toys.
Nor is it working at Bank of America. Don Obert, Dallas-based chief technology officer for the nationwide financial institution, said his company is just beginning major deployments of Linux systems after a nine-month pilot program last year.
''We think Linux is ready for prime time,'' said Obert, who is planning to use the software for network firewalls at first, gradually expanding into more sophisticated applications.
The SCO threats against Linux users leave him untroubled, Obert said, because intellectual property disputes crop up with traditional software as well as open-source products like Linux.
''I think they all deal with this kind of issue,'' he said. But Linux is so attractive, Obert said, that he is willing to take the risk. ''We still think that the promise, the benefit is there,'' he said.
Linux users may be shrugging off SCO's threats partly because SCO faces serious obstacles in proving that Linux contains SCO code placed there illegally by IBM.
''They'd have to prove that it's in the [Linux] source code,'' said Dan Kusnetzky, software analyst for IDC Corp. ''Next, they'd have to prove that it was something that's part of their intellectual property and not some one else's. Next, they'd have to prove that it was IBM and not someone else who contributed the code.''
Programmers from companies all over the world have made contributions to Linux, including a firm called Caldera, which later changed its name to the SCO Group.
''How can you tell from the source code who contributed it?'' Kusnetzky asked rhetorically.
Even supporters of the Linux movement say that the SCO case shows the need for a better procedure to ensure that only original code is added to the operating system. Development of the core of the Linux operating system -- its ''kernel'' -- is managed by Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux kernel.
But most of the code in Linux was produced by the GNU Project, a group begun in 1984 by the Free Software Foundation in Cambridge. Indeed, GNU's contribution to Linux is so large that foundation president Richard Stallman calls the operating system GNU/
Linux. Software writers who contribute to GNU must fill out a detailed questionnaire designed to ensure that the work is original. GNU is so careful to avoid software piracy that even SCO senior vice president Chris Sontag praised Stallman's efforts. ''Give him credit,'' said Sontag. ''He's trying to build a free software environment legitimately.''
Torvalds, however, doesn't require this of those writing code for the kernel.
''They don't have a formal process,'' said Free Software Foundation executive director Bradley Kuhn, ''and we have encouraged for years other free software programs to do this sort of thing.'' Still, Kuhn said he was sure Torvalds would not allow code belonging to someone else to get into the Linux kernel.
As for Torvalds himself, he's convinced the open source approach, where the code is published for all to see, makes code theft quite unlikely. Every piece of code is inspected by experienced programmers from around the world, who probably would recognize any stolen software, he believes.
''The openness of the development process already ends up being the strongest defense against taint,'' Torvalds wrote in an e-mail.
In any case, the reactions of Linux users to the SCO suit suggest that it will take more than the threat of legal penalties to make them replace their software. Jeff Whitmore, computer manager at Ernie Ball Inc., a musical equipment maker in San Luis Obispo, Calif., switched the company to Linux last year, after paying a $90,000 penalty to Microsoft Corp. for running unlicensed copies of Windows. The experience infuriated company executives, who vowed to stop using Microsoft products altogether.
Now the company is an all-Linux shop. Whitmore is delighted with the results, and totally unimpressed by SCO's threats. He acknowledges that some SCO code may have gotten into Linux by mistake, but adds: ''Sounds more like FUD to me.''
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.
This story ran on page C1 of the Boston Globe on 6/16/2003.
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