The Guardian: Time for Rearguard Action
Jul 25, 2003, 04:00 (10 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Glyn Mody)
"And yet, just when everything seemed to be going so well,
GNU/Linux is facing its potentially most damaging attack, and from
an unlikely quarter: a company that has done much to help make
GNU/Linux a viable business solution.
"Caldera was set up in 1994 to produce a business-oriented
version of GNU/Linux, at that time very much a hacker's system. One
important move was to acquire the rights to the Unix operating
system from the company SCO in August 2000. GNU/Linux was largely
modelled on Unix, and so this seemed to ensure there would be no
legal problems in terms of intellectual property issues--always a
danger while Unix was owned by a company competing with the open
source operating system.
"Despite its many contributions to the GNU/Linux world, Caldera
never enjoyed the same kind of success there as Red Hat, for
example. As a result, new management decided to take a different
tack. Renaming the company as SCO in August 2002 signalled a new
focus on the Unix side of the business. This culminated on March 7
in the filing of a lawsuit against IBM alleging 'misappropriation
of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition and
breach of contract,' and requesting damages 'no less than
$1bn...'"
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