[Editor's Note: This excerpt has been edited for legibility with the addition of added paragraph spacing. -BKP]
"We view IBM's counterclaim filing today as an effort to distract attention from its flawed Linux business model. It repeats the same unsubstantiated allegations made in Red Hat's filing earlier this week.
"If IBM were serious about addressing the real problems with Linux, it would offer full customer indemnification and move away from the GPL license. As the stakes continue to rise in the Linux battles, it becomes increasingly clear that the core issue is bigger than SCO, Red Hat, or even IBM.
"The core issue is about the value of intellectual property in an Internet age. In a strange alliance, IBM and the Free Software Foundation have lined up on the same side of this argument in support of the GPL. IBM urges its customers to use non- warranted, unprotected software. This software violates SCO's intellectual property rights in UNIX, and fails to give comfort to customers going forward in use of Linux.
"If IBM wants customers to accept the GPL risk, it should indemnify them against that risk. The continuing refusal to provide customer indemnification is IBM's truest measure of belief in its recently filed claims..."
