The SCO Group has moved forward with its plans to offer Linux users protection against a lawsuit by making available a license that gives them the rights to run the open-source operating system.

The company is offering a SCO Intellectual Property License for Linux that permits the use of Linux without violating SCO Group's copyrighted Unix System V source code. SCO Group claims this code and derivative Unix code have been used without its permission to develop the Linux 2.4 and 2.5 kernels.

Each run-time-only license will cost a one-time fee of $US699 for a single-CPU system until 15 October. After that, the price of the license will jump to $US1,399.

"What's at stake here are intellectual-property rights," SCO Group president and CEO Darl McBride said at a press conference. Linux has to this point been used according to a "don't ask, don't tell" model, he said. "We're absolutely, 100 percent going to protect our intellectual-property rights, which we've spent hundreds of millions of dollars to buy and further develop," he said.

SCO Group hasn't defined pricing for systems using more than a single processor. If Linux users don't sign up for the new license, SCO Group has the ability to pursue individual users, McBride says, although he adds that the whole purpose of the licensing program is to avoid lawsuits.

SCO Group's contention is that it needs to collect fees from users for its intellectual property because vendors such as IBM and Red Hat Inc. don't indemnify their customers against intellectual-property infringements contained in the Linux kernel. "There's a shell game going on here about legal Linux liability," McBride said. "The rock is showing up under the shell of the end user. Vendors have shifted liability to their customers. IBM and Red Hat have painted a Linux liability target on the backs of their customers."

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