Recent SCO/Linux News

From: Avi Dines <amendoza@schwartz-pr.com>
Subject: Press Statement on Red Hat Lawsuit
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 22:14:32 GMT

SCO has consistently stated that our UNIX System V source code and
derivative UNIX code have been misappropriated into Linux 2.4 and 2.5
kernels. We have been showing a portion of this code since early June. SCO
has not been trying to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt to end users. We
have been educating end users on the risks of running an operating system
that is an unauthorized derivative of UNIX. Linux includes source code that
is a verbatim copy of UNIX and carries with it no warranty or
indemnification. SCOs claims are true and we look forward to proving them
in court. 

Recent correspondence from SCO to Red Hat further explains SCOs position.  

****************************************************


July 31, 2003


Mark Webbink, Esq.
Sr. Vice President and General Counsel
RED HAT, INC.
1801 Varsity Drive
Raleigh, NC 27606


Dear Mr. Webbink:


This letter is in response to yours of July 18,2003 to Darl McBride,
President and CEO of The SCO Group, Inc. ("SCO").


Before responding to your request, it is important to place your letter in
context. Your letter follows on the heels of Red Hat's S-3 filing of July
7, 2003, in which your company revised its risk disclosure statement [see
paragraph below for statement]. In addition, SCO is currently engaged in
litigation with International Business Machines Corporation ("IBM")
regarding its role in the development of the Linux operating system. At the
time of your letter, we had expected the possibility of a global resolution
of SCO's intellectual property claims against all Linux-related companies
that would have likely included Red Hat. This effort has apparently
stalled, through no fault of SCO.


Based on the posture of our litigation and your revised risk disclosures,
it is unclear to us the purpose of your July 18, 2003 letter. If you desire
to enter good faith discussions to address SCO's intellectual property
claims against Linux, either on behalf of a wider consortium of Linux
companies or solely on behalf of Red Hat, we are willing to meet with you
for that purpose.  In any such meeting, we will provide example after
example of infringement of our intellectual property found in Linux.  Of
course, any such demonstration must be pursuant to an acceptable
confidentiality agreement and must be intended to further good faith
discussions about resolving the differences between us.


If you seek information for the purpose of informal discovery intended to
benefit IBM in the pending litigation, or for the purpose of devising your
own litigation plans against SCO related to Linux, we must respectfully
decline your request. Therefore, please clarify in writing the purpose for
your request. Thank you.


Sincerely,


Robert Bench
Chief Financial Officer
The SCO Group, Inc.



[1] Red Hat states in the revised disclosure that it is "vulnerable to
claims that [its] products infringe third-party intellectual property
rights particularly because [its] products are comprised of distinct
software components many of which are developed by independent parties."
The revised risk disclosure continues: "[M]uch of the code in [Red Hat's]
products is developed by independent parties over whom we exercise no
supervision or control... [and Red Hat's] lack of access to unpublished
software patent applications, copyright registrations which fail to
adequately disclose source code, and numerous issued software patents that
are of dubious validity... Claims of infringement could require us to seek
to obtain licenses from third parties in order to continue offering our
products, to reengineer our products, or to discontinue the sale of our
products in the event reengineering could not be accomplished on a timely
basis.


****************************************************


August 4, 2003




Matthew J. Szulik
CEO
RED HAT, INC.
1801 Varsity Drive
Raleigh, NC  27606


Dear Matthew,


Attached is the letter I discussed with you during our July 31, 2003
telephone conversation.  Instead of actually sending the letter, I thought
it was best to telephone you and speak in person to see if we could resolve
the issues between our companies short of litigation.  We left the
conversation with a preliminary agreement to meet and continue our
discussions further.


To my surprise, I just discovered that your company filed legal action
against The SCO Group earlier today.  You, of course, mentioned nothing of
this during our telephone conversation.  I am disappointed that you were
not more forthcoming about your intentions. I am also disappointed that you
have chosen litigation rather than good faith discussions with SCO about
the problems inherent in Linux.

Of course, we will prepare our legal response as required by your
complaint. Be advised that our response will likely include counterclaims
for copyright infringement and conspiracy.


I must say that your decision to file legal action does not seem conducive
to the long-term survivability of Linux.


Yours truly,


Darl C. McBride
President & CEO

Index

My Unix/Linux Troubleshooting Book

My Hard Truths about Easy Money Book

My Self Employment Book

Jump to Comments

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them. I resell or can earn commissions from the sale of some of these items. Links within these pages may be affiliate links that pay me for referring you to them. That's mostly insignificant amounts of money; whenever it is not I have made my relationship plain. I also may own stock in companies mentioned here. If you have any question, please do feel free to contact me.

Specific links that take you to pages that allow you to purchase the item I reviewed are very likely to pay me a commission. Many of the books I review were given to me by the publishers specifically for the purpose of writing a review. These gifts and referral fees do not affect my opinions; I often give bad reviews anyway.

We use Google third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.