The SCO Group has terminated IBM's Unix license and upped the ante on the conflict by seeking a permanent injunction on IBM AIX and increasing the damages it will seek beyond US$1 billion.
The company, which failed to reach a settlement with IBM over the weekend, filed an updated lawsuit in Salt Lake City District Court Monday seeking to pull IBM's AIX license permanently and "multibillion-dollar" damages against IBM, a SCO spokesman said.
SCO's original lawsuit against IBM, filed in March, charged the computer giant with violating its Unix System V contract with SCO and specified US$1 billion in damages.
IBM did not respond as of press time Monday.
SCO said Monday that the termination affects IBM Business Partners. And in Friday's interview, IBM said it intends to defend its interests and those of its customers and resellers using or distributing AIX.
"Quite frankly, it means anyone using or selling it, they're doing it unauthorised and they don't have authority to sell or distribute it," said a SCO spokesman. "That is a concern for the channel."
However, another spokesman said that although channel partners should be concerned about selling an invalid software license to their customers, SCO does not intend to go after partners in legal fashion.
He could not say when the court would address the latest court filing, but said it wouldn't be immediate.
Many in the Unix and open-source communities criticized SCO's latest move in the unfolding legal drama.
Anthony Awtrey, vice president at I.D.E.A.L. Technology, a Linux specialist, was not impressed with SCO's latest strategy.
"If they're not in front of a judge today, they can just go butt a stump," Awtrey said. "[This move is] only good for popping their stock--again. If this is an amendment to their existing action, they are still making noises and not doing anything real...This case is still two years out."
SCO's termination of IBM's AIX license is not surprising.
The two parties, which have been embroiled in a contractual battle since March, did not come to agreement during the weekend.
SCO said in its original filing with the court that it would pull the license at midnight June 13 if the two parties didn't reach settlement.
SCO claims that IBM violated its Unix contract and misappropriated SCO's intellectual property by donating some Unix code to the open-source Linux project.
"Obviously, IBM doesn't think SCO can get an injunction," said Bruce Perens, a well-known Linux/open-source activist who used to head up Hewlett Packard's open source effort.
Dan Kusnetzky, IDC's vice president of system software research said this is just the first step in a lengthy process. And SCO must prove its allegations.
Even if the disputed code in AIX is identical "how do you prove IBM released it and not one of the former SCO people?," Kusnetzky asked.
"The former SCO organisation was all about peace, love and shared APIs, utitities and middleware and [it] gave a lot of that to the Open Source community. Caldera before this administration had a similar scenario and my impression is whatever source code [there is in AIX] could have been contributed by either of those. First it's not proven that this has been done, second,it's not proven they've been damaged and third, it's not proven that IBM did it," Kusnetzky said.
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