Along with Germany, Australian industry’s response to Lindon, Utah-based SCO’s claims has been the most proactive, with the Open Source Victoria trade group and open source services provider Cyberknights Pty Ltd already having made approaches to the ACCC.
OSIA is encouraging more Australian companies to do the same. In essence, we see SCO’s actions of demanding money from organizations that they have no business dealings with, for property which has not been proven to be their, akin to conduct not condoned by Australia’s Trade Practices Act (1974), wrote the OSIA In a positioning paper.
As such, we commend all current and future Linux users to act accordingly, by lodging complaints with the ACCC and doing nothing to engage SCO. Instead the OSIA recommends that businesses seek legal advice based on its position paper, which it said presents evidence against SCO’s claims.
Among other things the paper argues that Unix vendor SCO has dropped the key argument in its case against IBM Corp, that IBM misappropriated its trade secrets and copied them into Linux, that SCO has failed to prove there is any infringing code in Linux, and the fact that Novell Inc has challenged SCO’s claim of ownership over Unix System V copyright.
German Linux software and services firm Univention GmbH has so far been the most successful in combating SCO’s claims against Linux after a successful attempt to secure a permanent injunction against SCO preventing it from alleging that Linux contains illegally appropriated intellectual property after an out-of-court settlement.
