Kaiserslautern, Germany-based LinuxTag has accused SCO of unfair competitive practices and said that its lawyers had given notice to Lindon, Utah-based SCO’s German subsidiary to desist from making claims against Linux without providing proof.

SCO needs to stop claiming that the standard Linux kernel violates its copyrights, or they need to lay the evidence for their claim on the table, said LinuxTag’s Michael Kleinhenz in a statement. LinuxTag has demanded that SCO retract its claims regarding Linux kernel code by May 30 or make its evidence public.

SCO must not be allowed to damage competitors by unsubstantiated claims, to intimidate their customers, and to inflict lasting damage on the reputation of GNU/Linux as an open platform, Kleinhenz added. LinuxTag is Europe’s largest annual convention for Free Software focusing on GNU/Linux.

LinuxTag’s action follows SCO’s letter sent to 1,500 of the world’s top corporations warning them that they may be liable if it can prove that Linux contains portions of its Unix intellectual property. That is the central argument of the company’s $1bn lawsuit against IBM Corp, in which it claims, among other things, that IBM misappropriated Unix IP for inclusion in Linux.

It is worth noting that SCO has not accused IBM of copyright infringement but of misappropriation of trade secrets, unfair competition, interference with contract, and breach of contract.

SCO has, however, described Linux as an unauthorized derivative of Unix and has suggested that it may also have a case against Linux distributors such as Red Hat Inc and SuSE Linux AG, although it has not launched any formal legal proceedings against them.

Both Red Hat and SuSE recently told ComputerWire that they had yet to be informed exactly what Linux code was questionable. SuSE’s VP of corporate communications, Joe Eckert, added that the company had asked SCO for clarification but that SCO had declined to comment.

LinuxTag has also pointed out that until a few weeks ago SCO was itself distributing the Linux kernel under the GNU General Public License. According to LinuxTag: Thus even if SCO owns parts of the Linux kernel, it has made them into Free Software by distributing them under the GPL.

This is an argument that has been put forward by many open source supporters, but has yet to be substantiated, and is unlikely to be until the case goes to court (if it gets that far). Certainly comments made by Chris Sontag, senior vice president and general manager of SCOsource, have indicated that the company could argue that it was acting in good faith in distributing the Linux code, unaware that it was also distributing its own Unix IP, which had been illegally copied into Linux by a third party.

Source: Computerwire