Over the last year, SCO has claimed intellectual property rights to parts of the Linux operating system. Within the last few months, it has threatened legal action against major retailers for using the open source operating system. SCO claims that it holds the copyright to the Unix operating system, that Linux is an unauthorised derivative of Unix, and that companies using Linux are therefore violating SCO's copyright.
Last week, Dave Hogan, CIO of the National Retail Federation – a group representing more than 1.4 million US retail establishments – issued the following statement:
"Based on the information we have seen, the National Retail Federation believes the claims by The SCO Group are without merit. Novell Corporation is the last company that can demonstrate legal ownership of Unix System V.
"Novell Corporation filed a motion to dismiss SCO's lawsuit, demonstrating serious questions regarding whether The SCO Group ever gained legal ownership to Unix System V. Furthermore, The SCO Group has not specified which parts of Unix System V have been copied into Linux.
"In my opinion, it is almost as if The SCO Group's business model is to generate a revenue stream through litigation.
"NRF expects that retailers who use Linux will survive the current litigation. The NRF CIO Council will continue to pay close attention to this issue."
In April, a group called Open Source Risk Management, which claims to be the only vendor-neutral provider of Open Source risk mitigation and co-ordinated legal defence services, certified the Linux kernel as "free of source code that could provide a basis for meritorious copyright infringement claims."
After a rigorous six-month process of examining the individual software files in the Linux kernel and tracing their origins, OSRM reported that it found no copyright infringement in Linux kernel versions 2.4 and 2.6. As a result, OSRM said it will offer clients legal protection against copyright litigation for these versions of the Linux kernel.
"We decided to go straight to the heart of the matter and evaluate whether we could defend the Linux kernel. We determined that we can; and we will. Our clients will receive legal protection equal to, if not beyond, what they receive with proprietary software licenses," said Daniel Egger, founder and chairman of OSRM.
Egger continued:
"Along with many others, we agree that lawsuits like SCO's are legally weak; but we recognise the business issue for Linux users is that even cases without merit cost significant time and money to defend. This is not about bad software; there is nothing inherently more risky about using Open Source. This is about providing a united defence against those trying to profit from a legal system that permits frivolous but expensive claims."
OSRM is providing its vendor-neutral open source indemnification, offering legal protection for a fee of around 3% of maximum desired coverage, a price that it says is comparable to intellectual property defence insurance rates. For example, $1,000,000 in coverage would cost $30,000 per year. OSRM says clients will still have the freedoms of open source like modifying and sharing code.
For more information, see: www.osriskmanagement.com
