The arguments for open source are many. In a "total cost of ownership" (TCO) analysis, the advantages include freedom from license fees as well as a more robust security record and the ability to create, modify and extend the tools. Also, the Unix environment is the choice of the IOL volunteers who do most of the maintenance and administration. But many of the advantages of open source — both the "freedom as in beer" from exorbitant license fees and the "freedom as in speech" from restrictive license terms — are under attack by a small company with an opportunistic business model that hinges on litigating over the ownership of technology in Linux.

The SCO Group has had various incarnations and has been involved in Unix for some time. In fact, SCO was once Caldera of WordPerfect and, ironically, Caldera Linux fame. The intellectual property history of Unix itself is a long and convoluted tale. The two stories converge because SCO Group now owns the original AT&T Unix property. (Another offshoot of Unix known as Berkeley Unix or BSD is not immediately at issue here, but may be in the future.) Darl McBride is currently CEO of SCO Group. SCO's main software product is SCO UnixWare, a proprietary Unix for Intel computers based on the AT&T property.

As Linux has caught on in the market, it is not surprising that UnixWare is feeling the crunch. SCO's response was to claim that Linux contains misappropriated SCO intellectual property. SCO has followed up this claim by: (1) filing a string of lawsuits against companies it claims were involved in the misappropriation, and (2) claiming that Linux users must have licenses from SCO. SCO's first lawsuit was filed against IBM.

The plaintiff's lawyer in this case is David Boies, who is best known as the government's lawyer in the Microsoft antitrust case and as Al Gore's lawyer in the 2000 Florida election case. The essence of this suit is that code written by IBM as part of a joint development project with SCO was contributed to Linux by IBM, and that IBM did not have the authority to make that contribution. IBM defends itself by claiming that it has full ownership of the code in question and can do with it what it will. But McBride's public posturing surrounding this suit suggests that SCO is making claims much broader than the particular code from this project.

McBride has at various times claimed that: (1) thousands of lines of Linux code were lifted verbatim from AT&T Unix, (2) that any Unix-related development is a "derived work" of SCO Unix under U.S. copyright law (hence a copyright infringement), (3) that the GNU General Public License (the Linux kernel's license) is unconstitutional, and more.

SCO also announced their claim that Linux users — from enterprise systems to personal desktops — owe SCO a license fee, and that the license will provide them with permission to use SCO intellectual property in binary form, which is counter to the open-source nature of Linux. Two other SCO lawsuits followed this action. The timing might suggest that these suits are about failure to purchase Linux licenses, but it turns out that the defendants are SCO clients and the issues being litigated have to do with breaches of the existing contractual relationships. Meanwhile, there have been countersuits by IBM, Linux distributor Red Hat and Novell (who also has ownership claims related to the AT&T Unix code).

What is the impact of SCO's campaign of "fear, uncertainty and doubt" on the Linux business and open source? (FUD was a term coined, ironically, in reference to hardball sales tactics of IBM in an earlier era.) Most informed commentators in the technology business give little credence to SCO's claims. The best advice if confronted with an invoice is not to pay until the legal issues are settled. It is difficult to believe that SCO could prevail in court or that an SCO victory in its relatively narrowly drawn lawsuits could be construed as damaging the principle strategic gains of the open-source movement. But there is still a nagging nervousness until everything is resolved that justice might not be done.

Resources: The most comprehensive resource on the SCO saga is Groklaw (www.groklaw.net), a sideline of New York paralegal Pamela Jones. Jones has a definite point of view on this matter, though. The best exponent of the SCO side is probably the SCO Web site itself (www.thescogroup.com).

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I work with colleagues at IBM, and occasionally with IBM support, but I do not speak for IBM in any way.

Security advisory: Make sure your systems are fully patched. Turn on auto-notification for patches. Make sure your virus definitions are up to date. Run a firewall. Run a spyware detector. Don't use Outlook. Don't use Internet Explorer. Remember, it's a jungle out there.



Matthew Saltzman (mjs@ces.clemson.edu) is an associate professor of Mathematical Sciences at Clemson University and the editor of INFORMS Online.

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