"To make more sense out of the case, I talked with Chris Sontag, Senior VP & general manager of SCO's SCOsource Division. When I asked him what this meant for SCO's relationship with the Linux community, he replied,
"I have to say that this is not an issue regarding the Linux community. This is an issue between SCO and IBM. We don't have issues with people open sourceing or GPLing software that is independently derived and where there is no question of ownership. The isue we have is specifically with IBM, and specifically regarding contracts we have with IBM regarding their licensing of our intellectual property. I believe the issue and concern with the Linux community should be with IBM.
"We are happy to see Linux succeed on its own merits utilizing the efforts of the community derived completely independently; and we have also made contributions to the Linux community of certain IP that we had that we thought was appropriate to be provided to the open source community.
"However... we feel it is very appropriate for a business to defend its intellectual property. And that's a completely separate matter.
"Yes, we have straddled the fence, as far as being in the Linux community and the UNIX community, and we'll leave it at that..."
