"A decision by eight consumer giants, most of them Japanese, to throw their support behind Linux has the chief executive officer of SCO Group on the move. Darl McBride, whose company recently launched a legal attack on Linux for alleged patent infringements, will go to Japan this week in an attempt to prove his point with some of the manufacturers that came together last week as the CE Linux Forum (CELF).
"McBride, who is fluent in Japanese, will visit with several founding members to show them code samples in which the Linux open-source operating system allegedly violates SCO's Unix patents, said an SCO spokesman. CELF's eight founders are Hitachi, Matsushita, NEC, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba. 'Members of that consortium are lining up in droves to view that source code,' the spokesman said.
"Linux proponents saw the formation of CELF by a powerhouse coalition as a vote of confidence for the upstart OS, and further proof that corporate Linux users are not overly concerned about the legal threat from SCO. CELF will focus on the promotion of Linux-based consumer electronics products..."
