[ Thanks to Bastion
for this link. ]
[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…”