Aussie open source advocates attack SCO
Aussie open source advocates attack SCO
The Open Source Victoria (OSV) industry cluster has filed a complaint with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) against The SCO Group in response to the vendor's requests for licence fees from enterprise Linux users.
The complaint relates directly to a press release issued by SCO on January 20, in which SCO formally announced the availability of a licence which permits the use of SCOs intellectual property, in binary form only, as contained in Linux distributions (the SCOSource Initiative).
In response to the release, the OSV, which is made up of over 100 Victorian firms and developers who provide services and technology related to free and open source software, said; "SCOs press release, and representations made on SCO's website, raise a number of issues of concern for Open Source Victoria (OSV), because SCO appears to be saying some of SCO's existing licences are not effective.
"SCO has already licensed different versions of the Linux kernel to consumers and resellers and now appears to be saying those licenses are not effective according to their plain terms," said OSV member Brendan Scott.
OSV notes that the terms of the licence are specifically directed to consumers who, in addition to using the SCO Versions themselves, are also contemplating supplying them to others. It is not an uncommon practice for acquirers of a Linux kernel to then on supply that kernel to others as part of a service offering. If SCO's initial licence grants were noteffective, both the initial takers, and anyone to whom they have on supplied the kernel could be affected. Any such uncontested reversal of the previously stipulated licence has the potential to be very damaging both to consumers and to businesses who acquired the kernel from SCO for the purpose of on supply.
In the view of OSV, if SCO has previously offered to licence specific versions (2.2 and 2.4) of the Linux kernel on the terms of the GPL then it should be required to be held to those licence terms in respect of existing licensees and those licences should be declared to be valid and effective.
The OSV also believes that where a consumer acquired a copy of the relevant Linux kernels from SCO prior to the commencement of SCOs SCOSource intitiative, that consumer should be entitled to the grant of a licence by SCO on terms which are of the same effect as the GPL, and that any marketing conducted by SCO in relation to its SCOSource initiative should explicitly state that existing licensees of OpenLinux and SCOLinux products are not required to acquire any additional licences and that such existing licences are valid and enforceable according to their terms.
In order to help clarify this, the OSV said that SCO should correct its existing advertisements and advertise those corrections.
It would seem that enterprise Linux users in Australia are in any case playing a waiting game as far as purchasing Linux licences from SCO, until the legal battles between SCO and Linux companies such as IBM, Novell and Red Hat have been resolved, because as of last week, SCO admitted that it had not sold a single licence in this country.
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