Business 2.0: A Big Test For Linux

“Every so often in the tech world, an intellectual-property
lawsuit comes along that gets the coders clucking, predicting that
it’s the end of the digital world as we know it. A year ago, it was
British Telecom’s attempt to collect royalties on hyperlinks. And
Amazon now and then comes under fire for some of its
business-process patents.

“The Linux community, due in part to its freewheeling nature and
in part to its public licensing schema, largely has avoided the
litigious fray. Until now. On Jan. 22, open-source software
provider SCO Group (formerly Caldera) announced its plans to form a
licensing division and hire über-lawyer David Boies
‘for research and protection of SCO’s patents, copyrights and other
intellectual property.’ The move has met with serious consternation
among the Linux and open-source communities, with venom coming, not
surprisingly, from the Slashdot camp in particular. ‘Does anyone
else see this as the end of SCO (Caldera) like I do?’ one poster
asked. ‘I certainly will never use anything from them ever again.’
This kind of typical Slashdot vitriol aside, many open-source
observers view this as a turning point in the history of Linux
adoption and use…”

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