By Brian Proffitt
Managing Editor
During today’s first quarter financial conference call, SCO CEO
Darl McBride revealed the second target of their IP license
enforcement plan: DaimlerChrysler.
This nature of this dispute is contractual, as opposed to the
copyright-based suite against AutoZone filed late yesterday.
McBride cited the requirements in their agreement with
DaimlerChryler is that they live up to their voluntarily compliance
demands with SCO, demands which SCO feels that they did not
meet.
DaimlerChrysler was one of SCO’s customers that has had access
to the SCO UNIX source code. The suit does not specifically accuse
DaimlerChrysler of porting SCO UNIX source code into Linux, but,
McBride explained, since DaimlerChrysler has not certified that
they have or have not complied, SCO felt obligated to file the suit
in order to check the compliance of this license demand.
McBride revealed that SCO was in the process of filing their
suit against DaimlerChrysler in the Oakland County, Michigan courts
as the call was being made.
McBride fielded questions from analysts and reporters regarding
the company’s SCOsource initiatives, including a direct question
regarding a former AutoZone employee’s public assertion on Groklaw
that no SCO libraries were ported to Linux. McBride replied that he
could not respond specifically because on a request from Judge
Wells to not comment on specifics in the IBM case.
McBride stated that their counterparts on the IBM side have
“conveniently gained third-party Web sites to their cause” to get
IBM’s message out, while SCO is limited only to their own abilities
to get their side out.
McBride emphasized that if customers are waiting for these
lawsuits to be finished before deciding whether to purchase a SCO
IP license, then SCOsource will be ready to take them to court.
“Whichever way they want to go,” McBride said.
When asked what they feel the end result of all of these actions
would be if indeed SCO loses their lawsuits, McBride answered that
right now they feel the case for their IP within Linux is pretty
strong.
Many if the analysts’ and reporters’ questions focused on the
SCOsource initiatives and for the first time, the tenor of the
analysts’ questions seemed to be on the skeptical side. One analyst
asked whether today’s legal actions would set a precendent to SCO’s
existing customers that they might be sued.
McBride replied that they would have no issues with any customer
that lived up to their contractual agreements.