[ Thanks to Matt for
this link. ]
“Outside and in-house legal counsel advised the SCO Group to
send a warning letter about Linux use to the CEOs of 1,350
companies Monday, SCO CEO Darl McBride says.“In a letter dated May 12, SCO Group, which holds the license to
the original AT&T Unix operating system, warned commercial
users of the open-source Linux operating system that ‘Linux
infringes on our Unix intellectual property and other rights.’
McBride also said in the letter that ‘legal liability that may
arise from the Linux development process may also rest with the end
user.’ In an interview Thursday, McBride said the company, formed
when the former Caldera Systems bought the rights to Unix software
products from the old Santa Cruz Operation in 2001, had in recent
months hired consulting software engineers who found that the Linux
kernel contains ‘lines and blocks’ of Unix source code. ‘Linux is
an unauthorized derivative of our Unix source code,’ he says.“According to McBride, in-house counsel and lawyers from the
firm Boies Schiller & Flexner LLP, which is representing SCO in
a Linux-related lawsuit against IBM filed in March, advised the
company to tell Linux users that they could be violating SCO’s
intellectual-property rights…”