SCO Group Preps Lawsuits Against Linux User, Novell

Linux OS

Sun last week scored what it positioned as a major win for its desktop when it signed a deal that makes Sun the preferred vendor for the China Standard Software Company, a consortium of government-supported integrators formed to deliver a standard Linux-based desktop system. Sun's Enterprise Java Desktop, due to ship Dec. 12, will compete head-on with Microsoft's Windows Office system.

But SCO rained on Sun's parade by announcing from yet another Las Vegas conference that it may take further legal action against Linux backers including Novell once that company's $210 million acquisition of SUSE Linux is complete.

SCO speculated on its own legal strategy after announcing it would pay $9 million in cash and stock to former Microsoft antitrust prosecutor David Boies to fund the litigation beyond the suit filed against IBM in March.

But a SCO spokesman confirmed late last week that it will not try to block Novell's acquisition of SUSE and will not,at least for now,take The BSD Group to court. The lawsuit against the end user, however, is for certain. It is expected to be filed within the next two months, and as early as next week.

"SCO's upcoming legal action is focused on a single Linux end user, not on the open-source community," according to a statement issued to CRN by SCO last week.

One attorney familiar with the suit said it will be tough for SCO to win without a ruling in the IBM or Red Hat cases.

"They have to go after a customer, because if they don't, this whole licensing program is a joke and they're a paper tiger," said Tom Carey, a partner with Bromberg & Sunstein in Boston.

SCO won't yet reveal the end user's identity, although it is likely among the 1,500 Linux users that received letters from SCO on the matter last spring.

SCO President and CEO Darl McBride acknowledged that the expanded litigation is worrisome to SCO's customers and partners.

"We're broadening our scope and going after the cleanup project. %85 It's like cleaning up [after] the Exxon Valdez," McBride told CRN in Las Vegas.

Hewlett-Packard said it will honor its pledge to pay the legal bills of any affected Linux customer. Novell and Red Hat said they will not comment unless SCO makes good on its threat.

IBM, whose 6,000 Linux customers include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch and Lucent Technologies, said only that it will not offer customers indemnification because it runs counter to the open value of Linux, a spokeswoman said.

One Linux solution provider said he is not quivering in his boots over the impending lawsuits.

"Our customers have been ignoring anything threatened by SCO, maybe because the majority of our clients currently are the government or the Department of Defense," said Douglass Hock, president of I.D.E.A.L. Technology, Orlando, Fla. "It's sad that SCO is suing the world."

ElizabEth Montalbano contributed to this story.