The letter from IBM’s vice president of system sales Bob Samson accuses SCO of attempting to wring money from customers as part of an unfair and unsupported attack on Linux.

Samson’s letter came after SCO announced it has been granted copyright on code in UnixWare System V to support its $3bn case against IBM.

SCO also encouraged companies using Linux to buy a UnixWare 7.1.3 license it said would indemnify them against possible prosecution for violation of the company’s copyright.

The UnixWare license was announced after SCO earlier this year sent a letter to 1,500 business users of Linux, advising them they may also face legal action. SCO’s letter was sent to organizations on the Fortune 500 and Global 2000 list.

SCO’s advice to these customers, though, appears to have fallen on deaf ears and rather than be deterred from using Linux, uptake has grown.

Web site survey specialist Netcraft said during the last two months Linux has made a net gain of over 100 enterprise web sites. Netcraft said sites migrating to Linux included Royal Sun Alliance, Deutsche Bank, SunGuard, T-Online and Schwab.

Among likely reasons for continued deployment, Netcraft speculated the action may not presently have the attention of IT practitioners in large companies. Other factors may include a belief SCO won’t win or pre-existing commitment to a migration strategy.

Netcraft analyzes 24,000 sites run by a list of 1,500 leading enterprises, compiled from the Fortune 1000, the Financial Times 500 and various FT regional sites. This makes it likely that the list of companies that received letters from SCO will be quite similar to the list of sites we use to study enterprise web site technology choices, Netcraft said.

IBM, though, appears to not be taking users’ uptake for granted.

Samson’s letter told sales staff IBM is counting on them to give customers with questions or concerns the correct facts, and visit IBM’s SCO Group lawsuit page for up-to-date information.

The vice president said: SCO’s statements consist of bare allegations without supporting facts. SCO has yet to identify the code which it claims is infringing in Linux… SCO is asking customers to pay money based on pure unsubstantiated threats.

A SCO spokesperson said the company could only show code under Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) because of the terms of existing Unix licensing agreements with companies like Sun Microsystems Inc, Hewlett Packard Co and Fujitsu.

He said while SCO cold not show code, the company claims Remove Copy Update (RCU), Non Uniform Memory Architecture (NUMA) and Journaling File System (JFS) are derivatives of System V code used in Linux.

The spokesperson added Samson’s letter showed IBM was taking the SCO action very seriously.

Source: Computerwire