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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cfimx who wrote (53934)	5/2/2003 4:37:40 PM
From: miraje	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

This came out today... story.news.yahoo.com SCO Heats Up Linux Legal Battle with IBM James Maguire, www.NewsFactor.com The SCO Group announced its conclusion that code from the company's Unixware OS has been copied into the Linux (news - web sites) OS. The statement sprang from an analysis performed in conjunction with the SCO Group's billion-dollar lawsuit against IBM (NYSE: IBM - news), which alleges that the tech giant misappropriated code from Unix (news - web sites) and incorporated it into Linux. SCO owns the copyright to Unix. "We had hired some outside consultants to compare code from the Linux kernel to our Unix system 5 source code, which is the base Unix source code that is used for a lot of different products," Blake Stowell, SCO director of public relations, told NewsFactor. "In doing the comparison, there were instances where they found line-by-line copies -- direct copy and pasting of code -- and other instances where the code had been obfuscated. [It was] changed to look like it was different, but in reality it was the same code," Stowell said. The announcement from SCO, which is still in the process of changing its name from Caldera, came shortly after IBM's filing in U.S. District Court in Utah. In its filing, IBM stated that "contrary to Caldera's unsupported assertions, IBM has not misappropriated any trade secrets; it has not engaged in unfair competition; it has not interfered with Caldera's contracts; and it has not breached contractual obligations to Caldera. "In any event, IBM has the irrevocable, fully paid-up, and perpetual right to use the 'proprietary software' that it is alleged to have misappropriated or misused," the company's filing states. Possible Lawsuits SCO's charge that the Linux kernel contains exact copies of Unix code is expected to be greeted unenthusiastically in the Linux community. It casts doubt on the legitimacy of the open-source OS. Asked whether other vendors that sell both Unix and Linux might be in danger of a lawsuit, SCOSource senior vice president Chris Sontag replied, "Is there a possibility? Yes." But "we believe the majority of our licensees are appropriately upholding their licenses, so we don't believe that's a problem," he told NewsFactor. Effect on Linux "If this lawsuit drags on, and it gets nasty, then it's definitely going to affect what happens with Linux," said Aberdeen Group analyst Bill Claybrook. "People who are interested in building their IT infrastructures around Linux are going to wonder exactly what's going to happen," he told NewsFactor. "I've talked with IBM about this, and they do a very good job of making sure the code they release from open source is not proprietary -- is not third party," Claybrook said. He would be "very surprised" if IBM had released Unix code into Linux, he added. The lawsuit could negatively impact the cohesiveness of the UnitedLinux consortium, an organization comprised of four Linux vendors, including SCO. "If SCO pulls out of the UnitedLinux group, that leaves SuSE as the only major player," Claybrook said. Charges Filed In the lawsuit filed in March, SCO Group sued for "no less than US$1 billion," charging that IBM "made concentrated efforts to improperly destroy the economic value of Unix, particularly Unix on Intel (Nasdaq: INTC - news), to benefit IBM's new Linux services business." SCO's Sontag offered this explanation: "We are alleging that IBM has been inappropriately utilizing the trade secrets of Unix, unfair competition, breach of contract in terms of their AIX license and keeping the source code confidential, and tortious interference." According to the SCO suit, IBM entered into its Unix license in 1985 to produce the AIX operating system. At that time, the copyright was owned by AT&T (NYSE: T - news). That agreement stipulated that IBM hold the code in confidence, and it prohibited its unauthorized distribution. However, the suit alleges that IBM "misappropriated the confidential and proprietary information" from a project that SCO and IBM worked on together. Code-named "Project Monterey," that collaboration was intended to create a version of Unix for Intel's Itanium processor. SCO, which had developed a technology by which Unix could run on Intel chips, shared this knowledge with IBM, the suit claims.